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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






D"1K ADAM, 



T T 



OH* EDOM, D1K ODEM. 



Tltnguuv 



By E. M. 

Author of" Elvira," 
*• Barns' Skins and Badgers' Skins Dyed Bed" etc,, etc. 



PORTLAND, ME.! 

HOYT, FOGG & DONHAM 
1882. 







Copyrighted, 1882. 



B. THUBSTON & CO. 

Sterotypers and Printers^ 
Portland, Me. 



PREFACE. 



It is hoped that this little book will be a help to 
very many of the Lord's dear people who can 
read no language but their own. As such turn 
over these pages, let them not conclude from the 
few Hebrew and Greek words on which their eye 
may alight, that the book is not for them. It is 
for them, expressly. The writer has prayerfully 
endeavored to bring up some of the precious things 
of God, out of the darkness of the rich Hebrew, 
into such plain light, that even the "wayfaring 
men" may "not err" in comprehending their 
meaning. And, at the same time, it is hoped that 
those believers who have time and opportunity, 
will be stirred up to study for themselves the lan- 
guages, in which the Bible may be read exactly as 
God wrote out the abundant fulness of His " good 
tidings of great joy," and that those Christians 
who already possess this treasure of knowledge, 
may be excited to make a constant aud living 
use of this "talent," entrusted to them by the 
Master. 

One word as to the genesis of the book, in the 
hope that it may prove suggestive to believers to 
consecrate to the Lord Jesus their all, praying al- 



4 PREFACE. 

ways over the selection of the gifts to their friends 
at those anniversaries, when they have occasions 
of giving pleasure, but too often forget that they 
may also be sowing the seed of the kingdom. At 
Christmas, 1880, the writer received from two be- 
loved friends in the Lord, a valuable present of 
Hebrew books. Eagerly turning over the leaves, 
in the new delight of possession, her eye was ar- 
rested, as by a sudden blaze of light. The three 
words forming our title were there on the open 
page of the Lexicon, standing one after another, 
in what seemed a rainbow-glory of prismatic 
beauty. The whole subject was there, in those 
three words, and all she had to do was to follow 
out the rich winding of that golden clue of bright- 
ness. Often, while revelling in the gracious re- 
vealings with which the Lord has blessed her soul 
while writing out this story of His love, has she 
thought of those whose precious gift was so 
used by Him, for her own comfort and learning ; 
and her earnest prayer is, that He may so bless 
this delivery of His message, that they who sowed 
as well as the one who reaped this measure of in- 
struction, may rejoice together over eternal results 
from this service in which their Lord privileged 
them to unite for Him. 
March, 1882. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Among the many devices of Satan, by 
which he deceives souls in these "perilous 
times " (2 Tim. iii. 1), few have been attended 
with so much sad success, as the denial of the 
" verbal inspiration " of Scripture. Many 
persons (alas ! their " name is Legion " !) who 
dare not yet go so far as absolutely to deny 
all connection between God and the Bible, 
yet commit what is actually a sin of equal 
arrogance in unbelief, when, while professing 
to recognize the general character of the 
Scriptures as being inspired by the Divine 
mind, they yet refuse to accept the whole as 
minutely dictated by the spirit of God in all 
its details. They say that the words and 
manner through which the truth is communi- 
cated, belong to Moses, Jeremiah, and the 
other messengers of the Lord ; and that these 
men of God, after being inf ormed in a general 
way what was their Master's will, were then 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

left to communicate that will to their fellow- 
men in such terms, and with such redundancy 
of expression, as might seem to them most 
calculated to insure its reception. 

But these cavillers forget that the prophets 
were often the bearers of " sealed despatch- 
es" ; that is, they were commissioned to write 
and utter what they themselves did not 
always fully understand, as indeed, it was not 
necessary that they should ; since they wrote, 
not only to supply the needs of their own 
time, but also those of ages yet to come, into 
all the minutice of which it was not possible 
for them to enter intelligently, unless God 
had wrought a miracle on their mental powers ; 
but unnecessary miracles the Lord never per- 
forms. (See Dan. viii. 26, 27 ; xii. 4, 8, 9.) 

We know, too, even in earthly matters, 
how much frequently depends on the messen- 
ger's delivering his commission in the very 
words, and even with the very punctuation, 
in which he received it. How often the 
change of a word, or letter, or even of a 
comma, would reverse the entire meaning of 
a phrase ! Is it not then, the height of pre- 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

sumption to accuse Jehovah of being less 
careful concerning His communications, than 
an earthly government would be of its em- 
bassage? Is it not practically saying that 
the commands of the King of kings are of less 
importance than the laws and treaties of this 
world' s sovereigns ? 

Then another evil of such meddling with 
sacred things is, that it would rob us of much 
precious Scripture, according to the taste and 
prejudices of the objector. 

How often, when quoting God's plain rebukes 
of sin, have we been met by the cool retort : 

" O ! that was said by Moses, or Paul (as 
the case might be), to the people of his own 
time ! You cannot apply that to the nine- 
teenth century. That has nothing to do 
with the general moral truth ! " 

And again, when speaking of some precious 
comforting passage addressed to God's suffer- 
ing ones, or some word of guidance to His 
bewildered ones, how deeply have we been 
wounded by the sneer which belittled the idea 
of God's stooping to console individual sor- 
rows ; or by the question : 



8 INTRODUCTION. 

" Has not Gocl given you common sense to 
lead you, without your needing to go to the 
Bible for every small direction ? " 

As for the long genealogical lists in the 
books of Moses and the Chronicles, these ap- 
pear to be the special objects of contempt on 
the part of those who deny the "verbal inspi- 
ration " of the Bible ; and they consider such 
lists to have been inserted, either as a mere 
part of common secular history, or as a special 
bonne bouche to gratify the national vanity of 
the Jewish people. Thus they contradict, 
not only the spirit of Scripture, but also the 
positive assertions of the Lord Himself. 

We read, 2 Sam. xxii. 31 : " As for God, 
His way is perfect ; the word of the Lord is 
tried" (margin, refined}. Now, " toord" in 
the original is here expressed by rnDK, imrah, 
which signifies, not only the equivalent of our 
English "word" but also, a song, or poem (as 
the L atin carmen). Now every one knows 
th at the omission, insertion or alteration of a 
single word, would often change the whole 
character of a poem, spoiling its rhythmic 
beauty, and giving a tone or meaning quite 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

contrary to that intended by the author, who 
must, unquestionably, be the only fit person 
to "try," or "refine" his own compositions; 
and much of the dainty elegance and even of 
the intellectual power of a poem, often depend 
on some skillful play upon a single word. 
What would Tennyson, or Longfellow, or any 
other human poet, say to an edition of his 
works, having his name appended to them, 
indeed, but " tried," " refined," or corrected, 
to suit the taste and opinions of some smaller 
genius ? Would he not cry " Shame ! " on 
the literary piracy ? Still less is mortal man 
qualified to do anything but emasculate and 
utterly spoil, by his meddling, any of the ex- 
quisite " poems " of the Divine One, Who 
informs us that He, the Almighty Originator, 
has already " tried " and " refined " them into 
perfection. 

In Prov. xxx. 5, we have this statement 
with increased emphasis : 

" Every word of God is pure" ( ni^K, imrah, 
again), proving that He has not placed one 
" word " or " poem " of His at the disposal of 
man's criticism. 



10 INTRODUCTION. 

In Mark xiii. 31, our Lord tells us : 

" Heaven and earth shall pass away, but 
my words shall not pass away " ; showing thus 
how daring is the sin of those who strive to 
cause so many of God's " words " to " pass 
away," as things of little importance, and of 
mere human origin. 

Deut. iv. 2, very clearly prohibits such tri- 
fling with holy things : 

" Ye shall not add unto the word which I 
command you, neither shall ye diminish aught 
from it, that ye may keep the commandments 
of the Lord your God which I command 
you." "Word" is here expressed in the He- 
brew original by ^37? dabhar, answering to 
the Greek hoyog, and to the Latin verbum, vox, 
sermo, as well as to our Saxon, " toord." 

To the same effect are the following Scrip- 
tures : 

" Thus saith the Lord, Stand in the court 
of the Lord's house, and speak unto all the 
cities of Judah, which come to worship in 
the Lord's house, all the words (D 1 *)??, dab- 
harim) that I command thee to speak unto 
them; diminish not a word 0?7> dabhar). 
Ter. xxvi. 2. 



INTRODUCTION. 11 

" Moreover He said unto me, Son of man, 
all My words (""^i, dabharai) that I shall 
speak unto thee, receive in thine heart, and 
hear with thine ears." Ezek. iii. 10. 

Isaiah informs us why so many refuse to 
accept the literal words of the Most High : 

" If they speak not according to this word, 
it is because there is no light in them." viii. 20. 

An d again : " In that day shall the deaf 
hear the words CM?, dabherai) of the book, 
and the eyes of the blind shall see out of ob- 
scurity and out of darkness." xxix. 18. 

Here then, we learn that the blindness and 
darkness and deafness of sin incapacitate 
men from seeing and hearing the beauty and 
power of those little individual words which 
thrill, with their rich loveliness and music, 
the hearts to which the Holy Spirit's influ- 
ence has taken and revealed the precious 
things of Christ. 

But see the awful consequences of such re- 
jection, such refusal to see and hear! 

Our Lord says : " Making the word (?oyov^ 
of God of none effect through your tradition." 
Mark vii. 13. 



12 INTRODUCTION. 

Is it not so, now, in the case to which we 
refer? Are not large portions of the Bible 
left unread, and consequently, made u of 
none effect," because of the wicked human 
tradition that such portions were not fully- 
dictated by Jehovah ? Never can we forget 
the agony with which we recently heard the 
infamous assertions of two professed minis- 
ters of Jesus Christ; one, wresting Scrip- 
ture itself, declared that he possessed " a more 
sure word of prophecy" than the Bible; 
while the other remarked, with deliberate em- 
phasis, that he " did not consider the Bible, 
as a whole, the word of God " ! ! ! 

And where would such teaching place us 
finally ? If one person may reject some words 
of God, which offend his own self-love, 
another may refuse others for the same rea- 
son, and so we should be robbed of the whole 
book! 

" Will a man rob God ? Yet ye have robbed 
Me." Mai. iii. 8. 

And we may see how the Lord regards such 
spiritual felony, when we read Rev. xxii. 18, 
19: 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

" For I testify unto every man that heareth 
the words (^7°^)of the prophecy of this book, 
if any man shall add unto these things, God 
shall add unto him the plagues that are writ- 
ten in this book ; and if any man shall take 
away from the words (foywv) of the book of 
this prophecy, God shall take away his part 
out of the book of life, and out of the holy 
city, and from the things which are written 
in this book." 

Solomon tells us, Ecc. viii. 4 : " Where the 
word p?7, dabhar) of a king is, there is 
power; and who may say unto him, what 
doest thou ? " 

We will not risk the terrible result of ask- 
ing the presumptuous question, but will 
rather exclaim, with reverent joy : 

" He doeth all things well ! " Mark vii. 37. 

And now we purj)ose, in these pages, by 
the King's help, to examine lovingly and 
prayerfully, just one of His words, a w^ord so 
full of His " power," as to be an epitome of 
the whole plan and history of salvation, un- 
folding to us at once the sinner's piteous need, 
and the Saviour's merciful fulness in meeting 



14 INTKODUCTIOX. 

that need ; the sinner's utter destitution, and 
the Lord's unsearchable riches; the sinner's 
rash plunge down into the dunghill, and Je- 
hovah Elohim's far-back devisement of means 
whereby " His banished may not be expelled 
from Him." 2 Sam. xiv. 14. 

And may those who shall read these un- 
foldings of Divine compassion be constrained 
to search the Scriptures of truth for more 
such gems of glory, and be enabled to feel 
what Solomon was taught, nearly three thou- 
sand years ago, and what so many of God's 
redeemed ones rejoice to learn still : 

" Where the word of a king is, there 
is power." John v. 39 ; Mark iv. 24, 25 ; 
2 Pet. iii. 8; Heb. xiii. 8. 



0*™, Adam, o^k, Edom, d^, Odem. 

Many, even of those who profess to read 
the Bible " through," have been tempted to 
pass over, as both uninteresting and unprofit- 
able, those first chapters of the books of 
Chronicles which contain the genealogies of 
the early inhabitants of the world. A moun- 
tain of difficulties and wonders insurmounta- 
ble have those chapters been to such as have 
ventured to apply man's carnal " Why ? " to 
the Lord's sacred doings. Yet those who 
wait on the Most High have been enabled 
rapturously to exclaim : 

" Who art thou, O great mountain ? before 
Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain." 
Zech. iv. 7. 

And in those very chapters are folded up 
" parables " and " dark sayings," which, when 
interpreted and illuminated by the Holy 
Spirit, afford to the humble disciple of the 
Lord Jesus such gracious instruction as en- 



16 ADAM — EDOM — ODEM. 

ables him to apply the promise given by the 
mouth of the prophet Isaiah : 

"And in this mountain shall the Lord of 
Hosts make unto all people a feast of fat 
things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat 
things full of marrow, of wines on the lees 
well refined," xxv. 6 ; Ps. xlix. 4 ; John xiv. 
26 ; xvi. 13, 14. 

The first word in these genealogical lists, 
1 Chron. i. 1, is : 

ADAM. 

We once heard of an infidel's being con- 
verted by means of the mere study of the 
Hebrew language. He had resisted every 
other means of grace ; but this proved to be 
the Lord's chosen " hammer," which should, 
at last, "break the rock in pieces," Jer. xxiii. 
29 ; and the man was constrained to declare 
that only a God could have guided the for- 
mation of a language so expressly calculated 
to reveal the whole glorious plan of redemp- 
tion, in its grand intellectual mystery, and in 
its clear heart-simplicity. 

Nor can we wonder at such a conclusion, 
when we come to examine the riches of grace 



ADAM — EDOM — ODEM. 17 

and wisdom and glory wrapped up in that one 
little word " Adam" as it is written in the orig- 
inal Hebrew Scriptures, as Jehovah first dictat- 
ed those Scriptures, in all their pristine beauty, 
unshadowed by the medium of a translation. 
The word "Adam" is composed of three 
Hebrew letters : — 

But in these letters is contained much more 
than the name of the first man. They are, 
in the Hebrew Scriptures, made to represent 
three distinct words, of different, yet kindred 
signification, showing, as in a sweet " song of 
degrees," the principal subjects of God's gra- 
cious revelation to man ; and this trinity of 
instruction is derived from a fourth w^ord, 
composed of precisely the same letters, and 
being the root, whose general idea pervades 
the branch-words. The whole forms one of 
the numerous instances scattered over the 
pages of Holy Writ, of more or less direct, 
but always beautiful, illustration of the Di- 
vine Trinity of Persons joined in the central 
Unity of co-equal Godhead. 

The words so unvarying in the form and 



1 8 ADAM — EDOM — ODEM. 

number of the letters composing them, are 
distinguished from each other in meaning 
and pronunciation, simply by the different 
points placed above or below them. Thus we 
have : 

07£> Adam, meaning the red earth-clod, 

Dng, Edom, meaning, the red wan. 

D^fc, Ode?n, meaning the sardius, ruby, or 
red jewel. 

And all these are derived from : 

D1SJ, red, or he glows, or blushes, which, by 
affinity with the iEthiopic, also includes the 
idea of blushing beauty. 

So that, in connection with this first name 
in the long list recorded in the books of 
Chronicles, we have presented to us the three 
leading thoughts : man's nature, God's re- 
demption, and the honorable position to which 
that redemption raises those who partake of 
its" advantages. Then the root-word carries 
us back before " the ages," to God's " eternal 
purpose in Christ Jesus." Eph. i. 4 ; iii. 11 ; 
Col. i. 26 ; 1 Pet. i. 20. 

We will now proceed to notice, separately, 
the words formed from these three letters. 



DiK, Adam, the Red Earth-Clod. 

More than one word is used in Hebrew, to 
signify " earth "/ with them however, we 
have at present nothing to do, as they have 
no connection with our immediate subject. 

In Gen. ii. 7, we read : 

"And the Lord God formed man of the 
dust of the ground, and breathed into his 
nostrils the breath of life ; and man became a 
living soul." 

The word " man " is here, in the Hebrew, 
D*JK, aclam ; the word " dust, " sometimes 
rendered. " earth?- in other passages in our 
English version, is used to represent dry^ 
umcr ought earth, in contradistinction from 
•IDTO, adamah, red, ov cultivated earth. Thus 
the idea of the verse paraphrased, would be : 

"And the Lord God moulded a red earth- 
clod out of the dust of the cultivated earth, 
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of 
life ; and the red earth-clod became a living 
soul." 



20 ADAM, THE RED EARTH-CLOD. 

Out of the common mass of red earth, cul- 
tivated into general beauty by the Almighty 
" Fiat ! " the Lord, at His sovereign will and 
pleasure, gathered up a handful of the inferior 
portion, the surface "dust" (^£N aphar), 
and by His touch, recultivated it ; first, into 
a red earth-clod of quality superior to its 
origin ; next, moulded it into a thing of exqui- 
site, but lifeless beauty ; then, to finish His 
work, breathed His own life into it ; and thus 
changed the common noun, descriptive of 
human material, into the Proper Noun, which 
should single out that individual, by a world- 
long appellative ; at once distinguishing him 
from the inanimate clods of his native soil, 
and at the same time reminding him that he 
was formerly even as they, and would have 
so remained, had not the Almighty Choice 
enabled this particular red earth-clod to " at- 
tain to the resurrection out from among the 
dead," thus foreshadowing the spiritual future 
by the literal present. Phil. iii. 11. So : 

" In the day that God created man (D*JK, 
adam) in the likeness of God made He him, 
male and female created He them, and 



ADAM, THE BED EARTH-CLOD. 21 

blessed them, and called their name Adam 
(Dix), in the day when they were created." 
Gen. v. 1, 2. 

He " with whom is no variableness, neither 
shadow of turning" (James i. 17), thus began 
His dealings with His creature in the same 
way as He has continued them - ever since, 
giving, in the first dawn of creation's morn- 
ing, the same lesson as He gave afterward, in 
the full splendor of the noontide glory of 
" the Word made flesh," and dwelling " among 
us" (John i. 14), teaching human childhood, 
by means of the " object lesson " of creation, 
precisely the same truth which He has since 
j>resented to human maturity by means of 
the precept of the Holy Spirit, that : 

"It is not of Him that willeth, nor of him 
that runneth, but of God that showeth mer- 
cy." Rom. ix. 16. 

Xothino- but the Lord's sovereign choice 
and loving mercy separated our first father 
from his kindred clods, and made him better 
than they. 

The artists of this world talk much of " the 
angel in the marble," which only the master's 



22 ADAM, THE RED EAETH-CLOD. 

hand can disimprison, and of the fact that, 
to an unskilled eye and hand, all blocks of 
marble are alike, and that, to such, there is 
no angel there. But how few realize that, 
while they speak so of earthly art and of hu- 
man genius, as bringing out of the marble 
what that genius has, by imagination, first 
put in, — God listens, and, pointing back to 
His work of ancient times, pronounces the 
solemn words : 

" Out of thine own mouth will I judge 
thee, thou wicked servant." Luke xix. 22. 

If man was once, for a little while, declared 
to be " very good " (Gen. i. 31), who made 
him so ? Whose Heart of Love selected one 
clod from among the rest ? Whose Mighty 
Thought planned in the angel, not into fair, 
white marble, but into mean, red, crumbling 
dust ? And Whose Plastic Hand wrought 
more than an angel out? Who but the 
" Victory of Israel " (1 Sam. xv. 29, mar- 
gin) — even He "who doeth according to His 
will in the army of heaven, and among the 
inhabitants of the earth " ? Dan. iv. 35. 



ADAM, THE KED EAETH-CLOD. 23 

Hannah acknowledged this, long after, in 
her song of praise, when she said : 

" He raiseth up the poor out of the dust " 
(13K, aphar, the same from which Adam 
was taken), " and lifteth up the beggar from 
the dunghill, to set them among princes, and 
to make them inherit the throne of glory ; for 
the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and He 
hath set the world upon them." 1 Sam. ii. 8. 

And later still, down the ages, James, the 
apostle, joined the chorus of praise, when He 
said : 

"Of His own will begat He us with the 
word of truth." James i. 18. 

True, the apostle was referring to the new 
and spiritual creation of the believer, but in 
doing so, he spoke of the final and most im- 
portant result of the Divine Will, of which 
the earlier and earthly choice was the type. 
And this grand truth, respecting God's indis- 
putable right and fact of elective work and 
mercy, is expressly declared by the Lord 
Himself, in His address to Israel as a nation : 

" You only have I known of all the families 
of the earth" (nD*jK, adamah). Amos iii. 2. 



24 ADAM, THE RED EARTH-CLOD. 

Thus we have " line upon line " (Is. xxviii. 
10) of illustrative and didactic Scripture, 
showing us that lesson, so humbling to the 
arrogance of the unregenerate heart, that sal- 
vation is " not of works, but of Him that call- 
eth " ; and that the Potter hath " power over 
the clay." Rom. ix. 11, 21. 

The selection of one clod from the rest, and 
making it a man; the choice of one nation 
from the others, and establishing it as the 
nation, connecting this second choice with the 
first, by the use of the word nnnx, adamah; 
how do these exhibit, with the clear beauty 
of Divine heliotypes, the likeness of the 
sweetest, fairest choice of all, the choice of 
His Church ! " As He saith also in Osee, I 
will call them my people, which were not my 
people; and her beloved, which was not 
beloved." Rom. ix. 25 ; Hos. ii. 23. 

He made a man, out of a red earth-clod, 
which was not a man ; He made a nation out 
of a poor wanderer, who was not a nation ; 
and He made a living Church, out of dead 
sinners, " according to the good pleasure of 
His will." Eph. ii. 1, 4-10 ; i. 3-5. 



ADAM, THE KED EAETH-CLOD. 25 

We sec, then, the red earth-clod formed 
into a man, endowed with an immortal soul, 
and pronounced by his "Author and Finisher" 
(Heb. xii. 2), " Very good." Well might the 
name of the Almighty Artist "be called 
Wonderful" (Is. ix. 6), since out of such poor 
materials, He could make so beautiful a thing ! 
But yet more wonder, yet more beauty, yet a 
stranger display of Omnipotence was to come ? 
Alas, that it could only be displayed on the 
terrible back-ground which was first to be 
wrought by an enemy's hand into the picture ! 

Adam's name (had he but read it so !) con- 
tained a warning, as well as a reminder. 
While it was evidently designed to carry back 
his thoughts "to the rock whence he was 
hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence he 
was digged" (Is. li. 1), it was also full of the 
tender admonition : 

"Let him that thinketh he standeth, take 
heed lest he fall." 1 Cor. x. 12. 

Adam thought that he stood, but failing to 
"take heed," he fell; and Scripture very 
clearly teaches us what was the nature of that 
fall; it was simply a forsaking of God, and 



26 ADAM, THE BED EABTH-CLOD. 

going back to self. It was a giving up of the 
nobler part of existence, the soul, God- 
breathed, and God-given, to be tyrannized 
over by the ignobler part, the old base origin 
of the earthly self. This is set before our 
minds by the Psalmist, in Ps. cxlvi. 3, 4 : 

" Put not your trust in princes, nor in the 
son of man (D??, adam), in whom there is 
no help. His breath goeth forth, he return- 
eth to his earth (nrrjN, adamali); in that 
very day his thoughts perish." 

In this description of the literal death of 
the body, is exhibited a picture of the spirit- 
ual fall, which consisted, as the Psalmist so 
expressively says, in man's returning " to his 
earth " ; or, as the Hebrew more graphically 
renders it, in the red earth-clod's going home 
to his red earth-clodism, in the returning of 
D*J«, acfem, to HOIK, adamah. 

The body was earthly in its origin, in its 
nature ; the soul's origin was divine. Herein 
was the exceeding sinfulness of that sinful 
fall! It was a robbery of the crown-jewels, 
the terrible crime of high treason against 
God. The Lord had bestowed on Adam the 



ADAM, THE RED EARTH-CLOD. 27 

precious gift of an immortal soul, directly 
fathered by Jehovah Himself; a soul not 
" formed " or " made," as was the case with 
the body, but " breathed," imparted as a por- 
tion of the Divine One, even as a child is 
truly a part of the parent. Allusion to this 
is evidently made in the gospel of Luke, 
where it is said that Adam "was the son of 
God." iii. 38. By this priceless endowment, 
the red earth-clod was raised to a new kin- 
ship, an adoption into a new name and fam- 
ily, typifying the spiritual adoption of grace, 
whereby " earthly, sensual, devilish " sinners 
(James iii. 15) might be enabled to say, with 
new power, from a new standj)oint : 

" Beloved, now are we the sons of God." 
1 John iii. 2. 

But the earth-clod, instead of remaining in 
the high place to which God had raised him, 
a place well befitting the soul with which 
God had graced him, — returned to his origin, 
even as revolted Israel, when, forsaking the 
pavilion and court of their king, they raised 
the revolutionary cry : " To your tents, O 
Israel!" 1 Kings xii. 16; 2 Chron. x. 16; 



28 ADAM, THE RED EARTH-CLOD. 

2 Sam. xx. 1 ; and as unbelievers did in later 
years, when, abandoning the pure society of 
Jesus, " every man went unto his oicn house" 
John vii. 53. 

Thus did that red earth-clod! He went 
" to his own company," he returned " to his 
earth." But, alas, he went not as he came ! 
The clod had come forth, empty; it went 
back, full of stolen wealth. It had come out 
a portionless beggar; it went back, laden 
with spoils robbed from its Benefactor. It 
returned where, by origin, it belonged, but it 
dragged down with it, to " the weak and beg- 
garly elements " (Gal. iv. 9), a soul that did 
not belong there, and that had no natural af- 
finity with such surroundings. The fall of 
man was thus steeped in all the horrors of a 
crime " against nature," as well as clothed in 
all the degradation of a yielding to nature. 
Every sinner thus stands self-convicted of the 
fearful robbery which he has committed. 
The thief has the stolen goods upon him ! 
A soul which rightfully belonged to the pure 
shelter of " the curtains of Solomon," is 
found, besmirched and spoiled, among the 



ADAM, THE EED EARTH-CLOD. 29 

black "tents of Kedar." Sol. Songs i. 5. 
It was a breach of trust! God had imputed 
honor to the red earth-clod, when He in- 
trusted to it a soul ; He gave it, as an induce- 
ment to holiness, a holy thing to keep for 
him. It proved unworthy of the trust. It 
could not kill the soul, nor annihilate it, but 
it lost the treasure from the Rightful Owner, 
nor could the jewel ever be recovered until 
the injured Sovereign Himself went forth, 
"to save that which was lost." Matt, xviii. 11. 

A young girl, who had been rescued from 
a vile home, and employed as nursemaid by a 
Christian lady, one day, when sent out to 
walk with the children committed to her care, 
took them to visit her own wretched relatives 
in their filthy dwelling among sights and 
sounds of wickedness. One of the little ones 
there caught an infectious and loathsome dis- 
ease ; and on the faithless nurse's inquiring, 
in self-defense, of her indignant mistress : 
TL" Wasn't it natural that I should wish to 
see my friends ? " 

She was answered : 

"Possibly so; but you had no right to take 
my children there!" 



30 ADAM, THE KED EARTH-CLOD, 

What mother could have said otherwise ? 

And the red earth-clod had " no right " to 
drag God's child, the soul, into the compan- 
ionship of the earthliness and baseness of sin. 
It might be " natural " for the clod to grovel, 
but it should not have forced the soul to 
grovel with it. Adam should have considered 
that when the Most High placed a precious 
soul in the "sheath" (Dan. vii. 15, margin), 
of his body He practically said to that body, 
what Christ now says to His body, the Church : 

" Hearken, daughter, and consider, and 
incline thine ear ; forget also thine own people, 
and thy father's house. So shall the King 
greatly desire thy beauty ; for He is thy Lord, 
and worship thou Him." Ps. xlv. 10, 11. 

So is made manifest what men feel such re- 
pugnance to acknowledge, namely, that every- 
thing sinful belongs peculiarly and properly 
to ourselves ; while every tendency upward 
is a gift " that cometh from God only." Dan. 
ix. 8, 9 ; John v. 44 ; James i. 17. 

Leprosy is recognized as a type of sin ; and 
among the regulations of the Mosaic ritual 
respecting this disease, are to be found several 



ADAM, THE RED EARTH-CLOD. 31 

very striking illustrations of our present sub- 
ject. In Lev. xiii. 19, 24, 42, 43, 40, the word 
Wk reddish" M used, as descriptive of one of the 
symptoms proving the existence of the plague 
of leprosy in a person, or in a garment ; and 
in the thirty-seventh verse of the fourteenth 
chapter, the same word is used of the same 
symptoms in a house. In each of these in- 
stances, the word translated " reddish" in our 
English version, is, in the Hebrew, CHrplx, 
adamdam, which, by root-affinity, might be 
equally well rendered, " reddish" " very red" 
or " Adamish " / The more evidently a man 
became infected with leprosy, the more Ad- 
amish, or like the red earth-clod, he became. 
Leprosy, like sin, was simply a breaking out 
of nature, rendering the man quite unlike 
" the image of God " (Gen. i. 27), but making 
him appear exceedingly like himself. 

Job speaks of the selfish, or self-like char- 
acter of sin, when he says: 

" If I covered my transgressions as Adam 
(DIN), by hiding mine iniquity in my 
bosom." Job xxxi. 33. 

Compare this with what God taught Moses : 



32 ADAM, THE BED EARTH-CLOD. 

" And the Lord said furthermore unto him, 
Put now thine hand into thy bosom. And 
he put his hand into his bosom, and when he 
took it out, behold his hand was leprous as 
snow." Ex. iv. 6. 

The more we hide ourselves and our doings 
in our own bosom, the more Adam-like, the 
more clod-like we become. Adam's trying to 
hide his iniquity in his bosom, was, indeed, a 
hiding of one sin by another, a miserable at- 
tempt to cleanse a filthy object by casting it 
into a muddy ditch. From self, nought but 
leprosy, earth, sin, disgrace, can come. Adam 
endeavored to hide himself in himself, and 
failed most miserably ; for self could not 
truly hide self; every such attempt could 
only result in increased exposure. But an- 
other, a man like the earth-clod (yet O, 
how different !) did succeed most gloriously, 
where Adam failed most ignominiously. After 
the fall and the discovery, God proclaimed 
that ! 

" A man shall be as an hiding-place." Is. 
xxxii. 2. 

" The first man is of the earth, earthy ; the 



ADAM, THE RED EARTH-CLOD. 33 

Second Man is the Lord from heaven." 1 
Cor. xv. 47. 

" And so it is written : The first man Adam 
was made a living sonl ; the last Adam a 
quickening spirit." 1 Cor. xv. 45. 

The first Adam, by nature an earth-clod, 
received his immortal part by gift ; the Sec- 
ond Adam held His immortality by His own 
essential right. The first degraded the gift 
down to earthly sin, by natural inclination ; 
the Second brought His eternal purity of in- 
herent righteousness down among the earth- 
clods, moved by Divine love, in order that 
He might do for them what they were incom- 
petent to do for themselves, that is, provide a 
hidingplace; " and whosoever believeth on 
Him shall not be ashamed " (Rom. ix. 33), so 
completely shall their iniquity be hidden, not 
in their bosom, but in His — that bosom smit- 
ten for them and by them, while these rebel- 
lious earth-clods declared themselves His ene- 
mies, at the same time of Infinite Love in 
which He refused to accuse them to the 
Father (John v. 45), or to account for His 
scars in any other way than by the tender 

3 



34 ADAM, THE RED EARTH-CLOD. 

assertion that they were those with which He 
was " wounded in the house of His friends." 
Zech. xiii. 6. And this " Man," spoken of by- 
Isaiah as " as an hiding-place," is not, in the 
Hebrew, mentioned as D7?> adam, the earth- 
clod; another word for " man " is here used ; 
it is t^K, ish, the husband-man; akin to the 
earth-clod, it is true, and that by the nearest 
of all relationships, but of a nature, how far 
removed ! This " Man " is no crumbling 
dust, but is the " Rock of Ages," under whose 
shadowing protection the weary may hide, 
and on Whose u Everlasting Strength " (Is. 
xxvi. 4, margin), they may rest " in perfect 
peace " (Is. xxvi. 3), singing : 

"Rock of Ages, cleft for me, 
Let me hide myself in Thee ! " 

" Jesus, Lover of my soul, 
Let me to Thy bosom fly ! " 

" Hide me, O my Saviour hide ! " 

And He will hide them. The poor earth- 
clod, unable to stand alone, shall find a firm 
support, the shield of a Husband's protection, 
Who will be " a covering of the eyes to all 



ADAM, THE RED EARTH-CLOD. 35 

that are with thee, and with all other." Gen. 
xx. 16. 

When Paul speaks of " the last Adam," he 
the word e<*x<*nc, which, when used of 
time, signifies " last" but means also, when 
used of place, "extreme" "remotest." By 
nature, the two Adams are in a place of the 
extremest remoteness, one from the other. 
What can be more distant than the nature of 
the earth-clod from the nature of God ! Yet 
the same name is applied to both ! Job 
speaks of " the son of man," in allusion to 
humanity alone ; Job xxv. 6. David writes 
of the " Son of Man," in prophecy of Christ, 
Ps. viii. 4, as is explained in the Epistle to 
the Hebrews, ii. 6-9, and in both references 
the same Hebrew words, cn^~i?> ben-cidam, 
are used. 

The nearness and remoteness of the two 
Adams are both shown in 1 Cor. xv. 22 : 

" For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ 
shall all be made alive." 

Two persons, two powers, — Adam and 
Christ. Two states, — death and life. All 
who are akin to Adam, share his death ; all 



36 ADAM, THE RED EARTH-CLOD. 

who become related to Christ, partake of His 
life. The "all" is necessarily limited by the 
logic of common sense, and can only include 
those who come under the conditions of the 
predicate. For instance : in neither case is 
it for a moment supposed that the " all " com- 
prises all living creatures ; there is certainly a 
limit which is undoubted. Angels are living 
creatures, but neither " all " touches them. 
As they do not partake of Adam's earthliness, 
so they cannot inherit his death, nor, on the 
other hand, are they benefited by Christ's 
life ; for we are expressly told that : 

" He taketh not hold of angels." Heb. ii. 
16, margin. 

In the paraphrase of the old hymn, now so 
seldom heard : — 

" He passed rebellious angels by, 
And came for sinful man to die." 

Angels, therefore, not being "in Adam," 
cannot be included in the " all" dying in 
him ; not being " in Christ," they have no in- 
terest in the " all" made alive in Him. 

Another limit is, unbelievers cannot, any 
more than the fallen angels, be included in 



ADAM, THE RED EARTH-CLOD. 37 

the " all " of salvation ; for as they certainly 
are not " in Christ," so, as certainly, they are 
not "made alive." 

The conclusion is simple, and is the clear 
reverse of that Universalist teaching, which 
has so often attempted to pervert God's mer- 
ciful warnings. The truth stands plainly 
thus : If in Adam, then in Adam's death. If 
in Christ, then in Christ's life. Beings with- 
out connection with Adam, have no connec- 
tion with his death. Beings without connec- 
tion with Christ, have no connection with 
His life. 

We frequently see advertisements of won- 
derful medicines, " warranted to cure all dis- 
eases," but no one, even among the believers in 
such advertisements, has the slightest idea of 
interpreting them to mean that any medicine 
will cure a disease to tohich it is not applied. 
They take the words in their simple, straight- 
forward construction, and thus understand 
them to signify that the prescribed doses will 
cure all diseases to which they are applied. 
That is, the patient must not only read the 
advertisement, but must also take the medi- 



38 ADAM, THE BED EARTH-CLOD. 

cine, before venturing to dream of a cure. 
How strange, that men who can correctly 
construe language referring to worldly mat- 
ters, lose all their grammar, logic, and com- 
mon sense as soon as they read God's decla- 
rations respecting spiritual concerns, the 
most vitally important of all ! 

And yet how simple is the Lord's teaching ! 

" All" to whom Adam is applied, take the 
close of death ; " all " to whom Christ is ap- 
plied, receive the potion of life. 

Or we might state the case in another way : 
" All " who touch Adam become smeared 
with the soil of the red earth-clod ; " all " 
who touch Christ by his " taking hold " of 
them, become " anointed with the oil of joy " 
referred to in His name — " Christ," the " Mes- 
siah," or " Anointed One." Ps. xlv. 6, 7 ; 
lxxxiv. 9 ; Sol. Song i. 3 ; Is. lxi. 1-3. 

Yet the unregenerated heart is so besotted, 
that men who are well aware that their bod- 
ies can be cured by rio medicine which is not 
personally applied, yet wrest the Scriptures, 
by daring to claim for their souls the salvation 
of a Christ Whom they do not j>ersonally 



ADAM, THE BED EAETH-CLOD. 39 

receive, and whom they say, they do not per- 
sonally need. This is about as illogical, as 
would be such an assertion as the following : 

" I do not require any medicine myself, for 
I never have had any illness, and am quite 
sure that so healthy a person as I am, never 
will suffer from disease. But, of course, ^s I 
believe c Hollowaif s Pills ' to be a universal 
remedy for ' all the ills that flesh is heir to,' 
I am perfectly safe, in any case, without tak- 
ing them personally. There are the pills ; and 
here am I! The two need not meet ; for the 
pills are warranted to cure all diseases. So, 
between my having no complaint, and those 
pills being certain to cure all sicknesses, I 
need not trouble myself " ! ! ! 

Who would not laugh at so contemptible 
an absurdity of self-contradiction? And so, 
" He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh " 
(Ps. ii. 4), in pitying, but terrible disdain, as 
He beholds men giving to His kind warnings 
such contradictory scoffs, as they would never 
think of casting at their favorite quack medi- 
cine. To such a pitch has the insolence of 
man arisen, that he presumes to strive, and 



40 ADAM, THE RED EARTH-CLOD. 

quibble, and criticise, in dealing with Jeho- 
vah, as he never thinks of doing in his deal- 
ings with his fellow-earth-clods. But what 
saith the Lord ? — 

" Woe unto him that striveth with his 
Maker ! Let the potsherd strive with the 
potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to 
Him that f&shioneth it, What makest Thou ? 
or Thy work, He hath no hands " ? Is. xlv. 9. 

When the trembling hand of faith alighted 
on the hem of the Saviour's garment, He ex- 
claimed : — 

" Somebody hath touched Me ; for I per- 
ceive that virtue is gone out of Me." Luke 
viii. 46. 

No touch — no cure ; but " as many as 
touched Him were made perfectly whole." 
Matt. xiv. 36. 

How different from the infecting, death- 
giving contact with the earth-clod, spreading 
the contagion of sin and misery wherever it 
rested ! 

This matter of application is shown, too, so 
clearly, in our Lord's own experience. 

No sooner did He literally become, by hu- 



ADAM, THE EED EARTH-CLOD. 41 

man birth, D7£~t3? ben-adam, the Son of man, 
the Son of the earth-clod, the Son of Adam, 
than He deigned to incur the full conse- 
quences of His act. 

" Wherefore in all things it behoved Him 
to be made like unto his brethren, that He 
might be a merciful and faithful High Priest 
in things pertaining to God, to make reconcil- 
iation for the sins of the people." Heb. ii. 17. 

Thus He subjected Himself to the written 
doom: " In Adam all die." 

He, by touching the red earth-clod, was 
smeared. " The Lord laid on him the iniqui- 
ty." Is. liii. 6. He had stepped into Adam's 
family, and must die in him. 

But He had also power to die/br him ; and 
on the cross, in the very act of Himself suffer- 
ing the curse of the first part of the verse, He 
proved himself to be God, the Anointed King, 
by imparting the blessing of the second part 
of it. 

The dying thief was "made alive" in 
Christ ; for faith touched the Living One, and 
the Divine Virtue leaped forth to heal. Never 
was there a more vivid commentary on Scrip- 



42 ADAM, THE BED EARTH-CLOD. 

ture, than that scene on Calvary, regarded as 
a practical exposition of this verse. There, 
on two crosses, hung the earth-clod, and the 
Joy- Anointed One ! There hung the son of 
Adam, " dead in trespasses and sins " (Eph. 
ii. 1) ; and there hung the Only Begotten Son 
of God, possessing life eternal in His own 
right. John i. 1, 4 ; xvii. 5. 

And God in Christ laid hold of the earth- 
clod, and died for him, so holding him fast in 
the death-grip of Omnipotence. The earth- 
clod thus touched his God, and was " made 
alive " in Christ for evermore, by His quick- 
ening Spirit. John vi. 63. 

No sooner did the Lord of glory connect 
Himself with Adam, than the touch was 
death, and He passed under the power of the 
curse, lifting it for every soul, who, being 
connected with him by means of faith's touch, 
thus passes under the power of the blessing, 
and receives Christ's life of holiness, in the 
place of Adam's death of sin. 

The natural depravity of humanity, in its 
state of revolt and alienation from God, is 
shown in Hos. vi. 7, where the Lord says : — 



ADAM, THE RED EARTH-CLOD. . 43 

"But they like men have transgressed the 
covenant." 

The Hebrew original uses here a^ain the 
word DTO, adam; — "They, like the earth- 
clod, have transgressed the covenant." That 
is, they have done exactly what might have 
been expected, they have proved themselves 
to be exactly what they are, — earth-clods. 
And yet rationalists pompously month forth 
their praise of the " something good to be 
found in every human heart " ; while God em- 
phatically declares that He " saw that the 
wickedness of man (CJK, adam) was great in 
the earth, and that every imagination of his 
heart was only evil continually." Gen. vi. 5. 

In our English translation of the Bible, the 
word " man " is found many hundred times ; 
in Hebrew, however, this word is expressed 
by eight different forms, with some variations 
besides, according to the various shades of 
meaning which the Holy Ghost intended to 
convey to those who receive the blessed 
written message of God's truth. Not that we 
have any reason to imply that our English 
version is incorrect in thus rendering these 



44 ADAM, THE KED EABTH-CLOD. 

eight Hebrew words by one English term ; 
there is nothing in our statement that need 
be a hindrance to any humble believer who 
cannot read the Scriptures in their original 
tongues ; our version is, on the whole, a very 
correct one ; but it is not full of those exquis- 
itely delicate lights and shades, which no lan- 
guage, except the Hebrew, is capable of ex- 
hibiting unincumbered by those circumlocu- 
tory phrases which would render the volume 
too bulky for easy use and transfer. 

Much light is thrown on our subject now 
under consideration, when, on searching the 
Hebrew Scriptures, we remark that, in more 
than four hundred instances, not distinguished 
in the common translation, the word " man " 
is rej>resented by D1K, adam, or, the red earth- 
clod. And this frequently brings out in strong 
relief the contrast between our human weak- 
ness, and God's Divine strength. Thus Elihu, 
while stating a fact, shows in that one little 
word, as by a master-stroke, why that fact of 
his obligation is so clear to his understanding. 

" Let me not, I pray you, accejjt any man's 
person, neither let me give flattering titles 



ADAM, THE RED EARTH-CLOD. 45 

unto man." (DiK, adarn, the earth-clod). Job 
xxxii. 21. 

Job, too, acknowledges the wide difference 
between man and his Maker, by the same sim- 
ple word : — 

"I have sinned; what shall I do unto 
Thee, O Thou Preserver of men"? (D1K, 
adam, the earth-clod), vii. 20. 

How the facts are, by this expressive mode 
of stating them, pointed to our conscious- 
ness ! — " Thou Who icatchest and reservest 
the earth-clods " ! — So might the phrase be 
rendered ; so, simply showing man as the 
helpless clay in the hand of the Divine 
Watcher and Preserver ; speaking out, too, 
the doctrines of the Divine Sovereignty, 
whereby believers are mercifully, and by free 
grace and love, " preserved in Jesus Christ, 
and called " ; while unbelievers are, by the 
same sovereign and righteous power, u re- 
served unto judgment." Thus the Holy 
Watcher divide?, reserves, and, as the word 
translated, "Preserver" also signifies, besieges 
His earth-clods. In the one case, He pre- 
serves His chosen ones, His " vessels of iner- 



46 ADAM, THE RED EARTH-CLOD. 

cy," often by hedging up their way, or, be- 
sieging it, even " with thorns," so that they 
may indeed, although earth-clods, yet be His 
preserved earth-clods, folded in from the rob- 
bers, Satan, sin, and the world. In the other 
case, He watches against the u vessels of 
wrath," restraining their power in a way 
which they, poor earth-clods, vainly strive to 
oppose, and reserving them, in spite of all 
their scoffs, denials, and unbelief, unto that 
judgment which is so sure to come. 

Jer. xviii. 4-6 ; Jude 1 ; 2 Peter, ii. 9 ; Dan. 
iv. 13 ; Rom. ix. 23 ; Hos. ii. 6 ; Is. iv. 5 ; 
Rom. ix. 22 ; Ps. lxxvi. 10 (0*?$, adeem). Hab. 
i. 12 ; Heb. ix. 27. 

The antithesis is also strongly marked in 1 
Sam. xv. 29 : — 

" The strength of Israel will not lie or re- 
pent, for He is no earth-clod (DnK-K 1 ?, lo-adam), 
that He should repent." 

The covenants, and friendships, and prom- 
ises of earth-clods have a tendency to crumble 
away into their kindred dust ; but His nature 
is not so, neither are His covenants. 

How beautifully, too, does David extract 



ADAM, THE BED EARTH-CLOD. 47 

comfort from the thought that God can over- 
come with ease all man's efforts against His 
suffering servant ; and how sweetly does he 
express that comfort, when he says : — 

" In God have I put my trust ; I will not be 
afraid what an earth-clod can do unto me." 
(Dix, adam). Ps. lvi. 11. 

Solomon describes man's peculiar worth- 
lessness, in the words : — 

"Fear God, and keep His commandments ; 
for this is the whole of the earth-clod." (D7£> 
adam). Ecc. xii. 13. 

How forcibly this puts before us what our 
Lord Himself said, nearly a thousand years 
later : — 

" Without Jle ye can do nothing." John 
xv. 5. 

And how the perfect agreement of the Old 
Testament with the Xew proves incontrovert- 
ible the Messiahship of Christ-Jesus ; as every 
examination of the sacred pages shows, with 
increasing clearness, that not only in histori- 
cal facts, but also in doctrinal truth, He came, 
" not to destroy the law and the prophets, but 
to fulfil " ! Matt. v. 17. 



48 ADAM, THE RED EARTH-CLOD. 

No wonder that Solomon wrote : — -«^» 

"And I turned myself to behold wisdom, 
and madness, and folly ; for what can the 
earth-clod (D*??> adam) do that cometh after 
the King ? even that which hath been already 
done " ! Ecc. ii. 12. 

The earth-clod is absolutely nothing, as to 
value or power, without the fear of God, and 
the keeping of His commandments ; nay, it is 
so entirely a nonentity in goodness, that it 
cannot keep those commandments, except by 
the personal grace of the Lord. 

Without God, the earth-clod is nothing, 
and can do nothing; all that needs to be done 
" hath been already done " by the King Him- 
self ; and what " works of righteousness " can 
the earth-clod add to the Royal grandeur of 
the finished work of Him Whose name is 
" The Lord our righteousness " ? Titus iii. 5 ; 
John iv. 34, xvii. 4, xix. 30 ; Jer. xxiii. 6 ; 1 
Cor. iv. 7. 

The Sovereign has written, with His own 
hand, the pardon of those whom His mercy 
hath redeemed; the lines are traced, in the 
crimson tints of the blood of atonement ; and 



ADAM, THE RED EARTH-CLOD. 49 

He has signed the glorious Name which ren- 
ders the pardon an effectual act of the Triune 
Council of Divine Unity. Luke x. 20 ; Rev. 
xxi. 27 ; Matt. i. 21. And this is exprei 

with beautiful clearness by an allusive change 
of epithet, in Esth. viii. 8 : — 

" For the writing which is written in the 
King's name, and sealed with the King's ring, 
may no man reverse." 

In this verse, the Hebrew word for " man " 
is pic, ain, "nothing" ; and the same Hebrew 
word is literally translated in a passage which 
seems to be a spiritual duplicate of this histor- 
ical one in the book of Esther : — 

"I know that whatsoever God doeth, it 
shall be forever ; nothing (pK, a in) can be put 
to it, nor anything (ptf, ain) taken from it : 
and God doeth it, that men should fear before 
Him." Ecc. iii. 14. 

In Christ, the earth-clod will be glad to 
accept the King's decrees of mercy ; out of 
Christ, the earth-clod is counted as nothing, 
and cannot reverse them ; the clod comes 
after the King, and has no power to add to 
what the Omnipotent has declared to be 

4 



50 ADAM, THE BED EARTH-CLOD. 

" closed," " finished," " sealed." [See Hebrew 
of the text in Esther]. 

" Ye are dead," says the apostle. Col. iii. 
3. Could there be a more intense assertion of 
our earthly nothingness ? " And your life is 
hid with Christ in God," he adds. And here 
is exhibited the stamp of the King's ring, the 
irreversible decree of His Divine writing. 

Whether for mercy, or for judgment, the 
(D1K, adam) earth-clod "eometh after the 
King," and is therefore \% ain, " nothing," 
in affairs of the kingdom, but when adopted 
into that kingdom, having the " new heart 
and the right spirit," binding it by the con- 
straining love of Christ to the righteousness 
fulfilled for it by Him; then, indeed, the 
earth-clod receives " a name and a place," be- 
comes a potential existence, not, however, in 
its own right, but in His. The accomplished 
love and holiness of God. — " this is the whole 
of the earth-clod " ; this is what raises it from 
the position of being counted " nothing," to 
the dignity of being " a perfect man " " in 
Christ Jesus," " Who of God is made unto us 
wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, 



ADAM, THE RED ExVUTH-CLOD. 51 

and redemption : that, according as it is 
written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the 
Lord." Eph. iv. 13 ; Col. i. 28 ; 1 Cor. i. 30, 
31 ; Ezek. xxxvi. 26 ; Is. viii. 16. 2 Cor. v. 
14 ; Rom. x. 4. 

This was typified by Samson ; the long hair 
which was the outer sign of his possessing the 
strength of God, being cut off, " Then," said 
he, "my strength shall go from me, and I 
shall become weak, and be like any other 
man " (CJK, adam, earth-clod). Judges xvi. 
17. Only when joined to the Lord (1 Cor. vi. 
17), was he a perfect " whole"; separated 
from Him, Sampson was " like any earth- 
clod," that is, " nothing" in strength and 
grace. 

This sovereign mercy is manifested, too, by 
way of illustrative teaching, as well as in 
practical blessing, in the salvation of infants. 
These are mentioned in Scripture, and their 
states by nature and by grace, are set forth 
thus : — 

" Wherefore, as by one man sin entered in- 
to the world, and death by sin ; and so death 
passed upon all men, for that all have sinned '. 



52 ADAM, THE BED EARTH-CLOD. 

for until the law sin was in the world ; hut 
sin is not imputed where there is no law : 
Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to 
Moses, even over them that had not sinned 
after the similitude of Adam?s transgressions, 
who is the figure of Him that was to come. 
But not as the offence, so also is the free gift ; 
for if through the offence of one, many be 
dead, much more the grace of God, and the 
gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus 
Christ, hath abounded unto many." Rom. v. 
12-15. 

Infants, certainly, have " not sinned accord- 
ing to the similitude of Adam's transgres- 
sion " ; for he knew what he was doing ; he 
" was not deceived " (1 Tim. ii. 14) ; but went 
back to his earthliness with his eyes open to 
what he was about ; yet infants are sinners, 
by affinity with that first backsliding earth- 
clod. As they are " in the earth-clod," they 
necessarily partake of its nature ; for " who 
can bring a clean thing out of an unclean ? 
not one." Job xiv. 4. Death has therefore 
" passed upon " them, " in Adam " ; for they 
have sinned in him. Men of the world readi- 



ADAM, THE EED EARTH-CLOD. 53 

ly recognize this principle, when it is a ques- 
tion of securing a fine horse, or of stocking 
their dairy-farms with good cows. They are 
perfectly,serupulously aware, that no thorough- 
bred horse can descend from a mongrel, or 
otherwise inferior sire. All over the world, 
east and west, — by the Arab who requires a 
record of his horse's pedigree, all the way down 
from Solomon's stud, and by the " smart Yan- 
kee " who wants to secure a " trotter " that 
shall make " Fifth Avenue " stare, — this nat- 
ural fact is acknowledged, with regard to the 
animal part of creation ; yet, alas, for boasted 
human truth and consistency ! How many of 
those who would condemn a horse as useless, 
because of merely a far-back " cross in the 
breed," yet strive to claim perfection for their 
own utterly depraved human nature, in spite 
of the awful fact that the original parent was 
all " gone astray," " sold under sin," and that 
every body and soul born into the fallen race 
are partakers of the same consequent taint, 
being all " children of wrath," " shapen in in- 
iquity," and "conceived in sin." Is. liii. 6; 
Ps. xiv. 3 ; Rom. vii. 14 ; Eph. ii. 3 ; Ps. li. 5. 



54 ADAM, THE RED EARTH-CLOD. 

But for their helpless infant transgressors, 
there was mercy in the Divine mind. While 
the verse describing their connection with 
Adam, clearly declares them to be justly 
included in his condemnation, yet the tenor 
of the following passages as clearly rec- 
ognizes them among those saved by the ten- 
der mercy of God. Man's vaunted " free- 
will" ruined them ; the Lord's glorious " free- 
grace " redeemed them. In the salvation of 
infants, sinning " in Adam," but not after the 
wilful similitude of that transgression, the 
Lord presents us, too, with a picture of the 
sovereignty of that grace which has redeemed 
older offenders. In Ezek. xvi. 5, 6, while 
speaking primarily of the Jewish nation, the 
Lord also declares His decree of love for the 
unconscious babes ; and at the same time 
teaches us that although our sin is more con- 
scious and determined than theirs, yet that it 
is all of the same evil origin ; and that, with 
respect to our conversion, we are as helpless 
as they, and His grace is as sovereign and un- 
aided in the one case as in the other. [See 
Mark x. 15 ; Matt, xviii. 8, 4]. 



ADAM, THE RED EARTH-CLOD. 55 

Those whose self-will revolts from the 
humbling truths of Scripture, have recently 
endeavored to argue that those truths are con- 
trary to the loving-kindness which is so pre- 
eminently a characteristic of the Lord; and 
they have bitterly impugned what they term 
the " barbarous ferocity " of the old catechism 
which, they say, " limits the number of infants 
admitted into heaven, and arbitrarily consigns 
the rest to eternal torment, in the announce- 
ment that only ' elect infants are saved.' " 

But that catechism really does no such 
thing ! It expresses, in the simplest way, the 
plain facts taught us in the word of God. 
Had it stated that all infants were saved, 
there would have been a contradiction of the 
Bible ; for, except the first pair, all the inhab- 
itants of the world have been infants ; millions 
have grown out of infancy, and certainly have, 
"by their fruits" (Matt. vii. 20), proved 
themselves not saved. But the plain truth 
which the Bible contains, and which the cate- 
chism repeats, is, that God has mercifully 
elected to salvation all those infant earth- 
clods, whom He has also ordained to die in 



56 ADAM, THE RED EABTH-CLOD. 

their infancy. Nothing can be clearer to 
those willing to see. 

" It is not the will of your Father which is 
in heaven that one of these little ones should 
perish." Matt, xviii. 14. They are sons of 
the earth-clod, partakers of the sinful nature, 
and are therefore doomed. Nothing but the 
will of the Father in heaven stands between 
them and the execution of the doom. — 
Nothing but that ! But that does stand, and 
stands as a surely established foundation. 2 
Tim. ii. 19. 

So the Lord chooses from among the lost 
earth-clods His " vessels of mercy " ; and glo- 
rifies Himself by gathering into His Royal 
Court of Holiness even such as are, visibly 
before the world, most helpless for his service, 
magnifying His redeeming love and power in 
the salvation of infant portraits of older saved 
Ones, of both which it is true that, " they were 
born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, 
nor of the will of man, but of God." John i. 
13. 

That gracious, but earth-forgotten Christ- 
ian, Daniel Herbert, delighted thus to con- 



ADAM, THE RED EARTH-CLOD. 57 

template the unmerited " kindness and love 
of God our Saviour" (Titus iii. 4-6), and he 
sang of liea ven : — 

11 Babes thither caught from womb and breast, 
Claim right to sing above the rest; 
Because they found the golden shore, 
They never saw nor sought before." 

Here, then, we have come, step by step, 
along a course of Scripture proofs that we are 
all " concluded under sin." Gal. iii. 22. 

When our first father sinned (Is. xliii. 27), 
he carried back his own tendencies and desires 
(and ours with him), to the soil and debase- 
ment of that earthliness, out of which God 
had lifted him. Therefore the curse pro- 
nounced on him expresses a direct reference 
to his sin ; and in its fulfilment, would be a 
constant reminder of the nature of his trans- 
gression : — 

" Wherefore the Lord God sent him forth 
from the garden of Eden, to till the ground 
(nrDix, adamah), from whence he w r as taken." 
Gen. iii. 23. 

Adam was sent back to adamah; the earth- 



58 ADAM, THE RED EARTH-CLOD. 

clod to its kindred. He wished for earth; he 
had it ! He had now what he had stooped 
toward ; but O ! the agony of leanness in his 
degraded soul! Ps. cvi. 15 ; Is. iii. 11. 

And yet, how the yearning of Infinite Pity 
thrills through even the sentence of the Al- 
mighty Judge ! Adam, the sinner, toiling in 
doing "service," "labor," "work" p?#, abaci, 
to till), among the earth-clods, demands our 
tears of pity. But a day was to come, when 
redeemed Adams, consecrated earth-clods, 
were to exclaim : — 

" Our God hath turned the curse into a 
blessing " ! Deut. xxiii. 5. 

And with this song in their mouth, they 
would rejoice to be "in labors more abund- 
ant," toiling with earnest zeal among their 
kindred clods, " if by all means " they might 
" save some " ; but working no longer under 
the curse for " the bread that perisheth," with 
the " blackness and darkness and tempest " 
scowling on their efforts, and with a heavy 
yielding of "thorns and thistles" in return 
for their weariness. No ! " The Sun of Right- 
eousness" lightens them with His healing 
glory ; the " apple-tree " shelters them with 



ADAM, THE RED EARTH-CLOD. 59 

its rich shade ; and the " voice of the Belov- 
ed " assures them that their " labor is not in 
vain in the Lord." We labor among spiritual 
earth-clods still ; not, as Adam, for our daily 
bread, but for their reception of the " Living 
Bread " from heaven. 'And this toil is sweet 
among our old kindred, in Christ's name. 
" Such were some of " us ; but He Who has 
saved us, bids us pass on, at any cost, the sig- 
nal of the fiery cross, not as a summons to 
labor for salvation, but as a Royal Proclama- 
tion that He has endured the wrath, and 
quenched it in His blood. 

And this carries us on to the next division 
of our subject : — How came Hope among the 
earth-clods ? How entered the Glory into the 
company of the defiled ? 

Dent, xxiii. 5 ; 2 Cor. xi. 23 ; 1 Cor. ix. 22 
John vi. 27 ; Heb. xii. 19-24 ; Gen. iii. 18 
Mai. iv. 2 ; Sol. Songs ii. 3 ; 1 Cor. xv. 58 
Rom. ix. 3 ; 1 Cor. vi. 11 ; Eph. ii. 1 ; Matt. 
x. 8 ; Gal. vi. 14; Heb. xii. 1, 2 ; 1 Pet. i. 18- 
20 ; Job ix. 2. 

Edom will tell the story, how the word of 
power reached Adam. 



O^iK, EDt)M, the Red Man. 

The ruin of the red earth-clod was an ac- 
complished fact. Adam had lost happiness 
and honor. An unclean and naked transgress- 
or, he could no longer lift up the head in the 
presence of his insulted Creator. The black- 
ness of a great crime formed an impenetrable 
" wall of partition " between the two. God 
and man must remain for ever on terms 
awfully fatal to the weaker, unless some 
" daysman " could be found to lay his hand 
upon them both. Did such a being exist, 
even in the strange, deep thought of the Om- 
nipotent Himself ? Could any power, created, 
or uncreated, stand in a position of so perfect 
an at-one-ment, as to lay hands on the Most 
High without presumption, and on the earth- 
clod without derogation ? 

Could Jehovah ever say of any individual : 

" The man that is My fellow " ? 

And could the sons of the earth-clod ever 
dare to catch up the word, and add : — 



/ 



EDOM, THE EED MAX. Gl 

" The Man is near of kin to ws, One that 
hath a right to redeem " ? 

Eph. ii. 14; Ex. xix. 10-13; Job ix. 30-33; 
Zeeh.xiii. 7; Ruth ii. 20. 

The questions seemed tossed out like aim- 
less chaff upon the storm of human despair ; 
when, suddenly, there thrills through the 
wail, a Voice, tender as the mother-tones of 
woman's comforting, yet stern in glorious 
strength, " like the voice of great waters, as 
the voice of the Almighty, the voice of speech, 
as the noise of an host." Zech. i. 24 ; Is. lxvi. 
13. 



on«, Adam to the Rescue ! 

The champion-cry rings out as a silver 
trumpet of eternal jubilee from the Lord's 
own sanctuary. Lev. xxv. 9, 10. 

The seed of the icoman shall bruise the head 
of the serpent ! Gen. iii. 15. 

The woman's seed ! One sprung from her 
who was called, cn?> Adam, on her creation- 
day ! Gen. v. 2. A son of the female earth- 
clod! 

Who, Who cometh to the rescue ? 

The earth-clods startle into hope, as, in the 
far distance, they catch the splendor of " the 
Captain of our Salvation " (Heb. ii. 10), and, 
with quivering expectation, ripening into ec- 
static rapture, they cry out to the Deliverer : — 

" Who is this that cometh from Edom 
(Dig), with dyed garments from Bozrah? 
This that is glorious in His apparel, traveling 
in the greatness of His strength " ? 

And calm, with the grandeur of One self- 



ADAM TO THE RESCUE. 63 

devoted to a death-triumph, peals the an- 
swer : — 

" I that speak in righteousness, mighty to 
save " ! 

And as He comes nearer, it is seen that He 
Who moves with the step of a predestined 
Conqueror, is alone; and the stain on His 
vesture is a strange, new tint to the weary 
eyes watching His approach. Once more is 
heard a question from trembling lips : — 

" Wherefore art Thou red in Thine apparel, 
and Thy garments like him that treadeth in 
the wine-fat " ? 

Clear and stern comes the reply : — 

" I have trodden the wine-press alone ; 
and of the people there was none with Me ; 
for I will tread them in Mine anger, and 
trample them in My fury ; and their blood 
(Hebrew, ™.}, netsach, splendor, or strength), 
shall be sprinkled upon My garments, and I 
will stain all My raiment. For the day of 
vengeance is in My heart, and the year of My 
redeemed is come. And I looked, and there 
was none to help ; and I wondered that there 
was none to uphold ; therefore Mine own arm 



64 ADAM TO THE KESCUE. 

brought salvation unto Me ; and My fury it 
upheld Me." Is. lxiii. 1-5. 

Both the language and appearance of this 
Champion prove Him to be, as His name inti- 
mates, " near of kin " to the earth-clod, and 
yet utterly set apart and separate from His 
orethren (Gen. xlix. 26), like them in close 
family resemblance, and yet totally rnilike 
them by a mysterious beauty borne by no 
mere earth-clod. 



OIK, Adam — D*iK, Edom ! 

The name exactly alike in letter, yet quite 
different in the points, different in the pro- 
nunciation, different in the meaning ! Only 
a few points' difference between Adam and 
Edom ; but how much that included ! 

In ancient times the Hebrew was written 
without points ; the instructed reader gave 
the voice-value of the then unwritten signs. 
An ignorant man would, therefore, on turning 
over the Sacred pages, descry no distinction 
between din* and DTO. To the untutored eye, 
there was no distinction between the two ; 
both might be read to mean only adam, the 
red earth-clod. But a scribe, " a ready scribe 
in the law " (Ezra vii. 6), trained in the vari- 
ous delicate shades of accentuated thought, 
and, by long habit and association, accustomed 
to fluent and correct rendering of written and 
unwritten sounds, — such an one, on giving 
forth aloud the Holy Message, would, like 

5 



66 ADAM — EDOM. 

Ezra and his companions, " read in the book 
of the law of God distinctly, and give the 
sense, and cause to understand the reading." 
N~eh. viii. 8. May not Isaiah allude to some- 
thing of this kind, when he says : — 

" The Lord God hath given me the tongue 
of the learned, that I should know how to 
speak a word in season to him that is weary ; 
He wakeneth morning by morning, He 
wakeneth my ear to hear as the learned." Is. 
1.4. 

So the learned eye would recognize the 
kinship of DIN, Adam and Ditf, Edom ; the 
learned tongue would announce the difference 
between the earth-clod and his Deliverer ; the 
learned ear would hear the sweet tidings ; and 
the learned heart would receive, in love's deep 
engraving, the whole story made clear, as only 
love can make it, with no point missing now, 
but all so brightly legible, " that he may run 
that readeth it." Hab. ii. 2 ; 2 Cor. iii. 3. 

How many souls, in our own day, lose 
blessings, for want of the spiritual teaching 
which only God can give ! How many, alas, 
hearken not to the Great Teacher, Who takes 



ADAM — EDOM. 67 

the things of Christ and shows them unto the 
seeking ones! John xv. 26, xvi. 14, 15. 

Spiritual ignorance reads the gospel, all un- 
conscious of the points unwritten to the car- 
nal eye (1 Cor. ii. 14), and understands not 
the sweet sounds long forgotten by unregen- 
erated minds, and which can only be expressed 
and explained by the Spirit, " Who," said the 
Glorious One " from Edom," " shall teach you 
all things, and bring all things to your remem- 
brance." John xiv. 26. 

Thus, Unitarian error misses the points, 
judging, with carnal arrogance, by the mere 
surface appearance, and reading both Adam 
and Edom as equally signifying " poor hu- 
manity," and denying the Divinity of the 
EdomAYarrior, because, forsooth, He bears 
so unmistakably that likeness to His mother's 
Adam-race, which proves Him to be her veri- 
table Benoni, the " Man of Sorrows," a near 
kinsman, and therefore possessing what only 
a kinsman could, — namely, the right to re- 
deem by avengement. And so they say that 
Jesus was only a man, because He was so en- 
tirely, so perfectly a man. He wrapped Him- 



68 ADAM — EDOM. 

self, the God, in the disguise of our humanity, 
that He might steal through the hellish camp 
of Satan, into the sin-prison of his elected 
Bride, His predestinated church ; and His 
disguise was so complete, that even His Bride 
did not recognize her Lord (John i. 31, xx. 27- 
29), until He had already drawn her into the 
eternal safety of His arms ; and by the throb- 
bing of that mighty Heart against her own, 
and by the rush of the warm life-blood which 
secured her redemption, faith crept round her 
soul ; and in its power, she knew that no 
heart but One could love her so, or speak so 
comfortably in the wilderness to her out of 
His own agony. Hos. ii. 14. 

Strange paradox in this Dig, Edom! He 
was so entirely one with the earth-clods, that 
He hungered, thirsted, wept, and was weary. 
Matt. iv. 2 ; John iv. 6, 7 ; Luke xix. 41 ; 
John xi. 35. Yet He was so far above them, 
as their God, that He could make a small por- 
tion suffice for the food for thousands, could 
give a living water such as earth never knew, 
could dry tears by a miracle, and could raise 
the worse than weary into fullness of vigor. 



ADAM — EDOM . 69 

Matt. xiv. 17-21 ; John vii. 37, 38 ; Luke viii. 
52, 54, 55 ; Mark ii. 10-12. 

He was so unlike the earth-clods, that He 
was absolutely unspotted by pollution. John 
xiv. 30 ; Is. liii. 9 ; Hebrew viii. 26 ; 1 Pet. ii. 
22 ; 1 John iii. 5. He was so thoroughly 
made like them, that He was loaded with sin; 
no earth-clod had ever borne such a burden, 
for they bore, each man hi.s own only, but lie 
" bore the sin of many. Is. liii. 6, 11, 12 ; 
Heb. ix. 28 ; John i. 29. 

The very color that marked His garments 
and flushed his name, showed at once His 
union with them, and His separation from 
them. He was red ; so were they. But they 
were all red with the earthly nature ; right 
through to the heart of the earth-clod was 
the tint of the low origin ; while His redness 
of soil was no part of His Eternal Essence. 
His "garments " (7. e. the robe of His human- 
ity), were " dyed? A garment dyed, assumes 
a color foreign to its nature, — a color not 
dwelling within it, but put on it from without. 
A garment, too, is added, after the existence 
of a being already complete without it. So 



70 ADAM — EDOM. 

this Red Man from Edom was, first, in eternal 
completeness, " the Mighty Gocl, the Everlast- 
ing Father" (Is. ix. 6), without one particle 
of the earth-clod, without one stain of the sin- 
dye, before He put on the extraneous garb 
of human flesh, and received the dye of sin 
not His own. Sin rested itpon Him with the 
deep stain and heavy weight of a world's pol- 
lution ; but within Him no far-off faint sug- 
gestion of defilement could be found. And 
even the redness of His atonement proved 
also His double nature. Its power and value 
were of Himself alone. Its need had nothing 
to do with Him. He made that atonement 
so fair and mighty ; but it was the earth-clod 
who needed it. He wrought the beautiful 
robe of righteousness ; but it was a robe, 
which (as to its being a covering of atone- 
ment), He did not require, and which could 
never fit His Glorious Form, already " fairer 
than the children of the earth-clod " (07^ *J?ft 
mibbenni adarri) ; (Psalms xlv. 2) ; but He 
wrought it, and filled it to the need of those 
who were helpless to do aught for themselves. 
John Bunyan so aptly describes this, in 



ADAM — EDOM. 71 

words which are truly " like apples of gold in 
pictures of silver." (Prov. xxv. 11.) He 

says : — 

u If He parts with His righteousness to us, 
what will He have for Himself ? 

" Answer : He hath more righteousness 
than you have need of, or that He needeth 
Himself. 

" Pray make that appear. 

" With all my heart ; but first I must pre- 
mise, that He of Whom we are now about to 
speak, is One that hath not His fellow. He 
has two natures in One Person, plain to be 
distinguished, impossible to be divided. Un- 
to each of these natures, a righteousness be- 
longeth, and each righteousness is essential to 
that nature ; so that one may as easily cause 
the nature to be extinct, as to separate its 
justice or righteousness from it. Of these 
righteousnesses therefore we are not made 
partakers, so as that they, or any of them 
should be put upon us, that we might be 
made just, and live thereby. Besides these, 
there is a righteousness, which this Person 
has, as these two natures are joined in one. 



72 ADAM — EDOM. 

And this is not the righteousness of the God- 
head ; but a righteousness which standeth in 
the union of both natures, and may properly 
be called the righteousness that is essential to 
His being prepared of God to the capacity of 
the mediatory office, which He was to be en- 
trusted with. If He parts with His first 
righteousness, He parts with His Godhead ; 
if He parts with his second righteousness, He 
parts with the purity of His manhood ; if He 
parts with His third, He parts with that per- 
fection which capacitates Him for the office 
of mediation. He has therefore another right- 
teousness, which standeth in performance, or 
obedience to a revealed will, and that is it 
that He puts upon sinners, and that by which 
their sins are covered. Wherefore He saith : 
c As by one man's disobedience many were 
were made sinners, so by the obedience of 
One shall many be made righteous.' Rom. v. 
19. 

"But are the other righteousnesses of no 
use to us ? 

" Yes : for though they are essential to His 
nature and offices, and cannot be communi- 



ADAM — EDOM. 73 

cated to another, yet it is by virtue of them 
that the righteousness that justifies is for that 
purpose efficacious. The righteousness of His 
Godhead gives virtue to His obedience ; the 
righteousness of His manhood giveth capabil- 
ity to His obedience to justify ; and the right- 
eousness that standeth in the union of these 
tAvo natures to his office, giveth authority to 
that righteousness to do the work for which 
it was ordained. So, then, here is a righteous- 
ness that Christ, as God, hath no need of ; for 
He is God without it. Here is a righteous- 
ness that Christ, as man, has no need of to 
make Him so, for He is perfect man without 
it. Again, there is a righteousness that Christ, 
as God-man, has no need of, for He is per- 
fectly so without it. Here, then, is a right- 
eousness that Christ, as God, and as God-man, 
has no need of with reference to Himself, and 
therefore He can spare it ; a justifying right- 
eousness, that He for Himself, wanteth not, 
and therefore giveth it away. Hence it is 
called 'the gift of righteousness.' Rom. v. 
17. This righteousness, since Christ Jesus 
the Lord has made Himself under the law, 



74 ADAM — EDOM. 

must be given away ; for the law doth not 
only bind him that is under it to do justly, 
but to use charity. Wherefore He must, or 
ought, by the law, if he hath two coats, to 
give one to him that hath none. Now our 
Lord indeed hath two coats, one for Himself, 
and one to spare ; wherefore He freely be- 
stows one upon those that have none. And 
thus, Christiana, and Mercy, and the rest of 
you that are here, doth your pardon come by 
deed, or by the work of another man. Your 
Lord Jesus Christ is He that worked, and 
hath given away what he wrought for, to 
the next poor beggar He meets." 

The Hebrew word translated " dyed" gives 
us a whole treasury of thought concerning 
this (Is. lxiii. 1) fBtt, chametz, dyed, leavened, 
brightened with ruddy splendor. Leaven is 
used in Scripture as a type of sin. Thus we 
learn that Christ's garments were stained, 
dyed, with our sin, and with the need caused 
by it ; but what was the leaven of shameful « 
disgrace in us, became a sign of glory on 
Him ; for no sooner did He take up our in- 



B 



ADAM — EDOM. 75 

iquities, than He showed that they were to 
Him but an opportunity to exhibit His Divine 
power by " triumphing over them in it. Col. 
ii. 14, 15. So long as we bear the leaven-stain, 
it proves that sin abounds ; but as soon as 
Edom takes on the tint, He turns it into a 
redemption-brightness, and the redness of the 
blood of atonement out-colors the redness of 
our pollution ; so that " where sin abounded, 
grace did much more abound." Rom. v. 20. 
What was vileness in us, changed to splendor 
on Him. It was vile in us to sin ; but it was 
glory beyond what can be expressed by our 
word "heroism" when He assumed the re- 
sponsibility and imputation of our baseness, 
and 

si Died to atone 
For sins not His own," 

" With dyed garments" also gives, according 
to Gesenius, the idea of being clothed w T ith 
the imperial scarlet, in the intense magnifi- 
cence of its brightness. In the fact of Christ's 
being touched by sin, He became literally D1K, 
Adam y the simple name spelled out in all its 
bareness ; but in the manner of His receiving 



76 ADAM — EDOM. 

the sin-touch, He wrote down and proclaimed 
the heavenly points of the glorious nng, 
Edom. Sin touched us, and it entered into 
us, took possession of us, and we became ser- 
vants, slaves of the monster. Rom. vi. 20, 21. 
Sin touched Him, and He kept it outside, and 
made a show of it openly as His slave, com- 
pelling it to cringe, and cower, and, by its 
eternal defeat, to witness to him as the Sov- 
ereign-Champion, the absolute Jmperator. 
Col. ii. 15. All the efforts of sin against Him, 
only wrapped him with lustre of added con- 
quest. Every temptation presented to Him 
personally, every sinner's burden cast on Him 
vicariously, only proved how easily He could 
refuse sin for Himself, and how abundantly 
able He was to bear it for others. 

At the close of the third verse of Is. lxiii., 
the Hebrew again gives a forcible two-fold 
declaration of Adam's shame and JEdom's 
glory : — 

"Their blood {splendor or strength) shall 
be sprinkled on my garments, and I will stain 
all my raiment." 

Man's very best works are yet as verily a 



ADAM — EDOM. 77 

part of his nature as is the life-blood ; and for 
them atonement was needed ; for when the 
God-man takes them up. He shows what 
man's best, man's strength, man's splendor, 
are : — a stain deep enough to color all 
Edom's raiment. Is. lxiv. 6. The redemption 
of even one sinner, the gentlest and least 
loathsome before men, required all the Divine 
power ; while that power was at the same 
time, sufficient to save " a great multitude 
whom no man could number." Rev. vii. 9. 
And if the splendor, the strength, — our best, 
— are a stain in His sight, what must our 
worst be, in His judgment, Who counteth not 
the heavens clean, or angels wise ! Job iv. 
18-, xv. 15, xxv. 5. 

But the thought is two-fold ; while He 
shows us that our strength is weakness, our 
fancied beauty only a foul blot, for which 
blood must atone ; He also shows us that 
when our blood-guiltiness is sprinkled on His 
garments, He gives us, in exchange for it, 
the true "beauty of the Lord our God," in- 
stead of the burnt-out ashes of our own ex- 
posed vanities ; the " garment of praise " for 



78 ADAM — EDOM. 

His strength, instead of the " spirit of heavi- 
ness " on account of our own miserable cle- 
ceivings ; the " oil of joy," crowning us as 
king-victors over sin, instead of " mourning " 
because of our position as slaves " sold under 
sin." Is. lxi. 1-3 ; Rom. vii. 14 ; Rev. xv. 2 ; 
Ps. xc. 17. 

But as our safety lies in the fact of all our 
sins being laid on Him, so our glory consists 
in His making us one with Him, by His be- 
coming one with us. Matt. i. 23. The " splen- 
dor" of the believer is in the Edom- War- 
rior, on Whom were his sins. 2 Cor. v. 21 ; 
Gal. ii. 20 ; Col. iii. 3. And the believer's 
" strength " is in the same Deliverer Who 
bore the stain of his blood-guiltiness. Ps. Ii. 
14. He was made accursed for me, but in 
Him "have I righteousness and strength." 
Gal. iii. 13 ; Is. xlv. 24. 

And so, to His redeemed, He turns the 
mercy-side ; while to the sins that ruined 
them, He is the fierce and fury-wrought 
Avenger. 

These thoughts are confirmed by Zech. i. 8 : 

" I saw by night, and behold a man riding 



ADAM — EDOM. 79 

upon a red (D'"W, adorn) horse, and he stood 
among the myrtle trees that were in the bot- 
tom." 

And by Ilab. iii. 8 : — 

" Was the Lord displeased against the riv- 
ers ? was Thine anger against the rivers ? was 
Thy wrath against the sea, that Thou didst 
ride upon Thine horses and Thy chariots of 
salvation " ? 

Still we hear the echo of a human warrior, 
possessing Divine power. Zechariah stood in 
the midst of earth's night. The blackness of 
darkness lay thick around the earth-clod, as 
he stood in the valley, outside the walls of 
Jerusalem ; yet out of the gloom, he saw as 
Isaiah had done before him; for the Max 
Who " stood in the bottom " was more than 
an earth-clod ; He is here called EFK, i s h, or 
the Husband-man, One Who was there with 
authority, as the Head of a weak one needing 
His protection and championship; and He 
brought His own splendor with Him, " to give 
light to them that sit in darkness, and in the 
shadow of death, to guide our feet into the 
way of peace. Luke i. 79. He was there as 



80 ADAM — EDOM. 

a knight, armed and equipped for conquest. 
The word expressing the color of the horse 
which he rode, denoted His affinity to the 
poor earth-clods whom He had come to re- 
deem ; while His own appellation, btk, ish, 
marks Him out as the same Edom-prince, 
" mighty to save," Who had flashed with such 
magnificence through the vision of Isaiah. 

The Hebrew word for myrtle tree, D^n, 
hadas, comes from a root, which, according to 
the Talmudists, signifies, to spring, arise, do 
speedily (prompted by troubled concern, yet 
shot athwart by a gleam of gladness). And 
the word "bottom" is r,; ¥?, metsidlah, depth, 
a shadowy place. And this was the position 
into which the Red Man, the Edom- Warrior, 
"the Man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim. ii. 5); "the 
Messenger of the Covenant" (Mai. iii. 1), "the 
only wise God our Saviour" (Jude 25), had 
brought Himself by His sympathy with the 
sons of the earth-clod ; and this was the man- 
ner of His comimg : He " sprang " to the 
work, being moved by loving trouble and 
deep concern for the distress of the poor, and 
being thrilled with triumphant joy, as He saw 



ADAM — EDOM. 81 

His assured success. And that " joy set be- 
fore Him " lustred with its golden gleams of 
eternal gladness all the webb of Adam-sorrow 
which folded Him in its darkness, when " His 
soul was grieved for the misery of Israel," 
being "afflicted in all their affliction," His 
bowels troubled for their moaning, yet being 
rapt with delight that He could save them out 
of their distresses by accomplishing the Di- 
vine will in them, and on their behalf. Ps. 
xii. 5 ; Heb. i. 9, xii. 2 ; Jud. x. 16 ; Is. lxiii. 
9 ; Jer. xxxi. 20 ; Ps. xl. 8 ; John iv. 34 ; Ps. 
cvii. 13 ; 1 Pet. iv. 1, 2 ; Heb. x. 10. 

In making speed to the spoil, He hasted to 
the prey. Is. viii. 3. He delivered the prey 
from the mighty grasp of sin, delivering the 
lawful captive, and dividing the prey of a great 
spoil. He did not lame Himself by the strug- 
gle for victory, for no effort could lame the 
strength of His Omnipotence ; but He became 
"lame," as a partaker of the weakness of flesh 
and blood, in order that, being crucified 
through the weakness of His earth-clod hu- 
manity, He might live by the power of His 
essential Divinity. And so, the Mighty to 



82 ADAM — EDOM. 

save, is also the Lame that takes the prey. 
The One Who died for the earth-clods, and 
was numbered among them, is also the God 
that forgives them through the virtue of that 
death and that alliance. He stooped to be- 
come DIK, Adam, that He might arise in glory- 
as DiK, Edom. 

Is. xlix. 24-26, xxxiii. 23, liii. 12; Matt, 
xxvii. 42 ; 2 Cor. xiii. 4 ; Heb. ii. 14 ; Is. lxiii. 
1 ; Is. liii. 9, 12 ; Mark ii. 7, 10, 11 ; 1 Cor. 
xv. 45, 50. 

The whole of Ps. xxii. and Is. liii., show 
how this " Angel that redeemed us from all 
evil," " stood among the myrtle trees," " in 
the depth," " in the shadowy place " ; He en- 
tered the land of woe, shadowing with the 
dragon-wings of " the prince of the power of 
the air " ; He stood in the very heart of that 
terrible valley of the shadow of death, where 
the prophet of the Adam-race beheld Him 
standing for their redemption, although they 
could not comprehend by what strange mys- 
tery of eternal love He had found out for 
Himself a door or entrance among them. Is. 
xviii. 1 ; Eph. ii. 2 ; Job xxxviii. 17 ; Col. i. 



ADAM — EDOM. 83 

26. He was so " in the shadowy place," that 
He was counted as " a dead man," dwelling 
" in darkness, as those that have been long 
dead." He was " free among the dead," pos- 
sessing an inheritance of woe in that Necrop- 
olis-valley, as a native-born citizen, having a 
home-right to be there. He was an earth-clod 
among earth-clods, " in the lowest pit " of our 
pollution imputed to Him, " in the darkness " 
of our pain borne by Him. Ps. xxxi. 12 ; 
cxliii. 3, lxxxviii. 5, 6. 

Thus thrilled the letters of D"JK, Adam 
through the name of the mounted Warrior 
among the dark myrtle trees. But on those 
letters of woe and weakness burst the glory 
of the starry points and signals of salvation, 
which trumpet the word 

Dig, EDOM, 

as a challenge to the foe, on behalf of those 
loved earth-clods whom He was "not ashamed 
to call brethren." Edam is among the sons 
of Adam ! And He stands there, in the depth 
of their shadowy place, with power to ascend 
up on high, having received gifts for the 



84 ADAM — EDOM. 

earth-clod, yea, " even for the rebellious " ; 
for it is God Who is manifested in the flesh 
in the Person of that Man among the myrtle 
trees. Heb. ii. 11 ; Ps. lxviii. 18 ; 1 Tim. iii. 
16; Eph. iv. 9. 

He stood among them " the Hope of glory," 
a "Hope that maketh not ashamed," for 
"whosoever believeth on Him shall not be 
ashamed." Col. i. 27 ; Rom. v. 5, ix. 33. 

Note the wondrous power of unrevealed 
love in that name, Edom ! O ! not one jot or 
tittle of his law can fail, for that law of God's 
love is written in the heart of the Christ from 
Edom. Matt. v. 18 ; Luke xvi. 17 ; Rom. xiii. 
10 ; James i. 25 ; Ps. xl. 8 ; Rom. x. 4. 

See how the "jots " and " tittles " of those 
wonderful points show out the glory, in a 
mighty blaze of splendor, of which Pythago- 
ras, the heathen philosopher, never dreamed 
in all his wildest theories of the " science of 
numbers " ! 



D*ig, Edom! 

Reading, Hebrew-fashion, beginning at the 
strong right hand of action, and going on to 
the left hand, where throbs the loving heart, 
we observe how the first point, composed of 
two dots, : , shows the Manifester, the God- 
Man, Him of the double nature," Who "made 
in Himself of twain one new man, so making 
peace." Eph. ii. 14, 15. See how the next 
point, that of the trebled dot, v, exhibits the 
threefold personality of God which Christ 
came to reveal, the Father, the Spirit, and the 
revealing Son ! John xx. 17, xiv. 26, xv. 26 ; 
John i. 18. Then look higher up, to that one 
final dot, • , leading us up to the Grand Unity 
of Divinity, where we read that the oneness 
is complete, the reconciliation fully effected 
by the double-natured Christ, declaring the 
Trinity of Persons co-equally comprised in the 
"One God over all, blessed for evermore." 
Rom. ix. 5 ; 1 Cor. xv. 24. We may apply to 



86 EDOM. 

the wonderful points of this Edom-name, what 
is said of the word JElohim, by Rabbi Simeon 
Ben Jochai, in the Talmudical Tract Zohar, 
on the vi.th section of Leviticus : — 

" Come and see the mystery of the word 
Elohim. There are three degrees, and every 
degree by itself alone ; and yet they are all 
one, and joined together in one, and are not 
divided one from another." 

And Rabbi Limborch confirms this ex- 
pounding of the Elohim, and gives us a clear 
description of the Trinity in Unity which God 
shows so exquisitely in the mere points ap- 
pended, with transmuting power and beauty, 
to the name of D*1K, the earth-clod. Truly the 
Lord is " wonderful in counsel, excellent in 
working " ! Is. xxviii. 29. He can say more 
in a dot, than man can explain in many pages, 
or utter in countless words ! 

When the Man was first discerned by Zach- 
ariah, " riding upon a red horse " among the 
myrtle trees, all the earth sat " still and was 
at rest." Zech. i. 11. The earth-clods were 
in a state of death-peace with their betrayer 
and seducer, the devil ; they were in ruinous 



EDOM. 87 

peace with the works of the devil ; they were 
wrapped in a mad hasheesh-dream of sensuous 
delight with their enslaved condition. And 
that solitary Champion had ridden into the 
lists, and was waiting there ; by His very 
presence sounding a defiance, which should 
break in upon their fatal slumbers, and break 
up the false peace which was enchaining them 
by the black witchcraft of its awful power. 
In Rev. vi. 3, 4, we hear, from Patmos, the 
old story of the myrtle-bottom by Jerusalem : 

" And when He had opened the second seal, 
I heard the second beast say, Come and see. 
And there went out another horse that was 
red ; and power was given to Him that sat 
thereon to take peace from the earth." 

The Hebrew adjective, describing the color 
of the horse, associated its Rider with D1K, 
Adam, the earth-clod ; but the Greek word, in 
this verse, adds another idea : *n#<7fj means 
fiery-red, fire-colored ; so that the two pas- 
sages together, the Old Testament and the 
New, combine to give out the whole story. 
He came " from Edom," with peace and love 
in His heart toward the earth-clods, for He 



88 EDOM. 

assumed their nature and their name, thus 
identifying Himself with them ; but before 
He could talk with them of peace, He must 
stir them up to war ; for as yet they knew 
nothing and cared nothing for the possibility 
of anything better than the dull apathy which 
they described by saying : — 

" There is no hope ; no, for I have loved 
strangers, and after them will I go." " We 
have made a covenant with death, and with 
hell are we at agreement." Jer. ii. 25 ; Is. 
xxviii. 15. 

But He, filled with the holy fire of wrath 
against sin, aroused them against His enemy 
and theirs, declaring to them the truth, and 
by the power of that truth, convincing them 
of His own love and tender friendship ; for 
He was come to put into the earth-clod, en- 
mity against their destroyer. He, as par ex- 
cellence, the Son of the earth-clod, the Seed of 
woman, was come to face for them the hot 
blasts of the wrath of their foe, and to bear 
for them the infinitely more terrible, because 
the perfectly just, fire of the wrath of that 
God Whom they had outraged by their long 



EDOM. 89 

and obstinate agreement with the evil one. 
He stood between them and the wrath of the 
King, satisfying that wrath in His own Per- 
son so entirely, that it would never pass on to 
one of those who were " hidden in the shadow 
of His hand." He stood, too, between them 
and their hellish foe, whose wrath of spite and 
discomfited rage He quenched in the sublime 
contempt of His Omnipotence. The devil 
thought to seize the Princely Edom by the 
heel of His humanity, and so, dashing out the 
Godhead by a blow, to pass over the body of 
the Dead Champion, and reclaim the old 
slaves of sin. But it was not possible for 
Death or Devil to hold Him ; their united ef- 
forts only gave him the scar which should for- 
ever prove His identity to His redeemed; 
while, with one blow of that Kingly Heel, He 
bruised the head and frustrated the schemes ' 
of the presumptuous foe ; and henceforth, the 
saved ones for whom peace is made by His 
wounds, shall, as 

" blood-bought captives raise 
The passion-song of blood.'' 

For in the moment of His wounding, yea, 



90 EDOM. 

even by that wounding, the blood which 
gushed forth gave them freedom and life 
eternal. When the destroyer of Adam dared 
lay a touch on Edom, at the first blow, he 
broke his own spell, and lay, an out-witted 
craven, evermore ; for, from the pale lips of 
that Man, standing in the death-shadows and 
resurrection-gladness of the myrtle-bottom, 
rang out the cry which was at once the death- 
song of sin, and the paean of redemption : — 

" It is finished ! 

And as that announcement thrilled the 
darkness, it became light about Him ; the 
" whole earth was full of His glory " ; " the 
posts of the thresholds moved at the voice of 
Him that cried " ; and heaven's choir, which 
had sung of His coming to the earth-clods 
with peace and good-will in His heart, now 
welcomed the peace secured, the good-will 
accomplished as the grand Hallelujah Chorus 
echoed and re-echoed through the gates of 
pearl and streets of gold : — 

" Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye 
lift up, ye everlasting doors ; and the King of 
glory shall come in. # 



EDOM. 91 

" Who is this King of glory ? 

The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord 
mighty in battle. 

Lift up your heads, O ye gates ; even lift 
up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of 
glory shall come in. 

" Who is this King of glory? 

" The Lord of Hosts, He is the King of 
glory." 

Then the Judge looked down from His 
throne on the earth-clods on whose behalf the 
warfare had been accomplished, and He de- 
clared their release and acquittal, saying : — 

" Your covenant with death is disannulled, 
and your agreement with hell shall not stand." 
" Acquaint thyself now with God, and be at 
peace with Him," " accepted in the Beloved." 

For as soon as the Warrior from Edom 
cried, "It is finished," the Judge could smile 
on the Adam-race, and tell out all His heart 
of love ; for the red fire of His wrath was 
quenched in the red blood flowing from the 
Red Man, the crimson-robed Captain of 
Salvation, made perfect for His redeemed 



92 EDOM. 

through His own suffering ; and now God 
might be just, and the Justifier of him that 
believeth on Jesus. 

And as the eternal peace was wrought, so 
is it applied. He fought to secure it ; and we 
must acknowledge the combat, before we can 
enter into the purchased reconciliation. We 
must feel our need, as being slaves of sin, and 
loathe the bondage, ere we can value the 
peace of God, and cry out for it. But even 
this consciousness of Satan's being an enemy ; 
even this finding out that his decoyments are 
lies, dragging us to death ; even this discov- 
ery that we need a true Friend, — even all 
this, is a gift from the same Hand that 
wrought the salvation itself. The sinner can- 
not desire Christ until that desire is given. 

2 Tim. ii. 26 ; Is. xlviii. 22 ; Ecc. iii. 8 ; 
Phil. ii. 5-8 ; Matt. x. 34, 35 ; Is. lxiii. 6, x. 
16, 17, xxvii. 4, 5 ; Gen. iii. 15 ; Luke xviii. 
13 ; Is. xlix. 2 ; Lam. iv. 19, 20 ; Is. xxvi. 19 ; 
Acts ii. ; John xx. 24-28 ; Is. liii. 5 ; Eph. ii. 
13 ; John xix. 30 ; Ps. cxxxix. 12; Is. vi. 3, 4; 
Luke ii. 14; Rev. xxi. 21 ; Ps. xxiv. 7-10; Is. 
xxviii. 18 ; Job xxii. 21 ; Eph. i. 6 ; John iii. 



EDOM. 93 

16; Heb. ix. 12, ii. 10; Rom. iii. 26, vii. 9-13, 
24, 25 ; 1 John iii. 8 ; Prov. xvii. 17 ; Rom. 
ix. 16 ; Ps. ex. 3 ; John i. 12, 13 ; Is. xli. 4, 
xliv. 6 ; Jer. xxxi. 3. 

Thus was accomplished the work of our 
salvation ! Thus did He finish the transgres- 
sion, by making an end of the sins of His peo- 
pie ; He made reconciliation for iniquity, as a 
merciful and faithful High Priest in things 
pertaining to God ; He brought in everlasting 
righteousness ; He sealed up the vision and 
prophecy, for He was " the end of the law " ; 
He was the Most Holy Anointed One. Dan. 
ix. 24; Matt. xxi. 21 ; Heb. ii. 17 ; Jer. xxiii. 
6, xxxiii. 16 ; Rom. x. 4 ; Hab. iii. 13 ; Is. x. 
27 ; Ps. lxxxiv. 9 ; Acts x. 38 ; Heb. i. 8, 9. 

It was for this that Job sighed, again and 
again; and several of his utterances most 
beautifully express the sinner's want of exactly 
such an Advocate as this Red Man from 
Edom. Read Job xvi. 21 : — 

" O that one might plead for a man with 
God, as a man pleadeth for his neighbor " ! 

The English here gives a very faint idea of 
the exquisite beauty of the original, which 



94 EDOM. 

might be more forcibly rendered something 
like this : — 

" O that one might plead to a Mighty Man 
with (or at home with, or, in the presence of) 
God, as the earth-clod to his neighbor " {com- 
panion^ or, friend ) . 

This seems a clearer translation of what was 
Job's cry all through the season of his dark, 
deep trial. What he desired was, not permis- 
sion for him, the sinner, to address himself to 
the Judge on his own behalf. This he knew, 
as things then stood, to be impossible. God 
had already taught him what He declared, 
later on, to Moses : — 

"Thou canst not see My face, for there 
shall no man see Me, and live." Ex. xxxiii. 
20. 

What Job longed to find, was the " Days- 
man (ix. 33), as yet unseen, the "Mighty 
Man," mighty in influence with the Invisible 
Judge ; One standing close, close to the Al- 
mighty, — One of Whom God could say : — 

" Behold, there is a j)lace by Me, and thou 
shall stand upon a Rock ; and it shall come 
to pass, while My glory passeth by, that I will 



EDOM. 95 

put thee in a cleft of the Rock, and will cover 
thee with My hand, while I pass by ; and I 
will take away Mine hand, and thou shalt see 
My back parts; but My face shall not be 
seen." Ex. xxxiii. 21-23. 

The sinner could not plead with God, as 
God. To face the awful glory of the Judge, 
were destruction. The terrible "blackness 
and darkness " of Sinai fenced off the trans- 
gressor from all approach to the Most High, 
and he could only wail, amid the writhings of 
an accusing conscience : — 

" O that I knew where I might find Him ! 
That I might come even to His seat " ! Job 
xxiii. 3. 

Vain reaching after the impossible ! 

Yet stay ! Might not the " Daysman " (O 
did such an One exist?) — might not He 
stand forth, and plead in JoUs name? But 
what unheard of qualifications were needed, 
to enable an individual to fulfil such as office ! 
Only a " Mighty Man " could do it, for no 
other would have strength to take up, much 
less carry through, so forlorn a hope. Then, 
the " Mighty Man " must be " loith God," in 



96 EDOM. 

purpose and plan ; for the Eternal Judge is 
an Absolute Ruler ; and " who can stay His 
hand, or say unto Him, What doest Thou " ? 
Dan. iv. 35. It would be useless to plead 
against God's intentions, for they are unalter- 
able ; He is the Unchangeable (Mai. iii. 6) ; 
therefore the Advocate, to be successful, must 
plead in perfect accordance with the Divine 
mind, He must, too, be of such equality with 
God, as to be " at home with " Him, perfectly 
familiar with the Unapproachable One, able 
to plead to Him with power and acceptance ; 
and He must be righteous Himself, — this 
strange Intercessor — ; for only "the Right- 
eous might plead with " God, that the sinner 
might, by the holy " dispute," " be delivered 
forever from the Judge." Job xxiii. 7. And 
yet the same Daysman of "great power" 
(xxiii. 6), must be so low, even "a little lower 
than the angels" (Heb. ii. 9), that Job could 
plead to Him, as an earth-clod to his compan- 
ion, as an accused to his friend who will carry 
his cause into court, in order to bring him 
out with an acquittal. The " Mighty Man " 
must be low enough for Job to reach Him 



EDOM. 97 

with familiar confidence, yet high enough 
to Himself reach God with assurance as in- 
timate. In short, Job sought to speak to 
One Who could speak to God. And, glinting 
through the shadows of his longings, there 
came to him, too, the visioned promise 
vouchsafed to Isaiah and Zechariah, so that he 
exclaimed, in a moment of delight, looking on, 
past the loving power of the plea, to the gra- 
cious glory of the reconciliation fully effect- 
ed : — 

"I know that my Redeemer liveth, and 
that He shall stand at the latter day upon the 
earth. And though after my skin worms de- 
stroy this body, yet in my flesh I shall see 
God ; Whom I shall see for myself, and mine 
eyes shall behold, and not another ; though my 
reins be consumed within me." xix. 25-27. 

What an exact foreshadowing of the words 
of the beloved disciple, long afterwards ! — 

" Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and 
it doth not yet appear what we shall be ; but 
we know that when He shall appear, we shall 
be like Him ; for we shall see him as He is." 
1 John hi. 2. 
7 



98 EDOM. 

Here was the Edom-likeness to God and to 
the earth-clod ! Here was the Kinsman-Re- 
deemer, having the blood-right and the spirit- 
power to avenge and to plead ! Here was the 
"Mighty Man," the "Firstborn among many 
brethren " from among the earth-clods, yet so 
Omnipotent, that He was able to face the ter- 
rible wrath of the Judge, leaving for us only 
the " back parts," the sweet mercy which had 
been hidden behind the veil of just indigna- 
tion against sin ! Rom. viii. 29 ; Rev. v. 9. 

Ezekiel and Daniel each duplicate the joy- 
message from heaven to earth. Daniel tells 
us of " One like the similitude of the sons of 
the earth-clod" (D^^JS, beni adam), "One 
like the appearance of the earth-clod (0*3$, 
adam), Whom He yet addressed as ^'ix, 
Adani, my Lord, the title, which, pluralized, 
the Jews to this day read as the synonym of 
the written ? but " great and dreadful name," 
nfTT, which they never pronounce. Dan. x. 
16, 18, ix, 4; Mai. i. 14. 

Ezekiel speaks out the thought plainly, tell- 
ing us of the union of the earth-clod letters 



EDOM. 99 

and the heavenly points, producing the Edom 
(Dig) manifestation of mercy : — 

"And above the firmament that was over 
their heads was the likeness of a throne, as 
the appearance of a sapphire-stone ; and upon 
the likeness of the throne was the likeness as 
the appearance of a Man (D??? ctdam^ the 
earth-clod) above upon it. And I saw as the 
color of amber, as the appearance of fire round 
about within it, from the appearance of His 
loins even downward, I saw as it were the ap- 
pearance of fire, and it had brightness round 
about. As the appearance of the bow that is 
in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the ap- 
pearance of the brightness round about. This 
was the appearance of the likeness of the 
glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell 
upon my face, and I heard a voice of One that 
spake." Ezek. i. 26-28. 

Could there be a clearer, more wonderful 
description, 'than this, of the " word made 
flesh," of the Warrior " mighty to save," yet 
stained with blood in mingled leaven and 
splendor! The "likeness of an earth-clod" 
" above upon the throne," and, combined with 



100 EDOM. 

this human resemblance, the " likeness of the 
glory of the Lord " ! And then the voice of 
this Mysterious Being speaks, truly, from the 
throne. Only the Self-Existent Eternal could 
command as that Voice commands through 
the succeeding chapters. It is the God-Man 
that speaks, as He spoke to John at Patmos. 
Rev. i. And just because the earth-clods can 
look up to the throne, to the " place by " the 
Lord, and say : — 

" The Man is there ! Ps. lxxx. 17. So the 
Lord can look down into the heart of the sin- 
ner, saved by " that Man Whom He hath or- 
dained" (Acts xvii. 31), and say, with judi- 
cial approval, as well as paternal love : — 

"The Lord is there"/ Ezek. xlviii. 35. 
How the Lord delights to manifest Himself 
in a paradox of mystery ! He sets the most 
beautiful bow of promise in the blackest cloud 
of desolation. He giveth the sweetest hope 
in the dreariest trouble, opening the widest 
door in the deepest valley. Hos. ii. 15. And 
He grasped the mighty sceptre of His most 
glorious kingdom, in the hands of His cruci- 
fied humanity. " The appearance as the like- 



EDOM. 101 

ness of the glory of the Lord " was never so 
magnificent, as when it "infolded" itself 
(Ezek. i. 4), in the likeness as the appearance 
of an earth-clod." So God's finger wrote His 
points of Edom mercy on our Adam ruin. 

" For God, Who commanded the light to 
shine out of darkness, hath shined in our 
hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of 
the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." 
2 Cor. iv. 6. "And the Word was made 
flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld His 
glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the 
Father), full of grace and truth." John i. 14. 

So Edom's work was accomplished for 
Adam ! The stain was assumed, and cleansed ; 
the burden of shame was lifted, and taken 
away ; gifts were received for men, " that the 
Lord God might dwell among them." 1 John 
i. 7 ; John i. 29 ; Ps. lxviii. 18. God came 
down into our humiliation, that He might 
raise us up to His dignity, as He said : — 

" And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, 
will draw all unto me." John xii. 32. 

Nor does this word " all" imply the univer- 
sal salvation apart from personal application 



102 EDOM. 

by the Holy Ghost, in which Universalists im- 
piously boast, while they hug their sins. The 
word " men" inserted in our English version, 
does not exist at all in the original ; the word, 
klKvou^ " I will draw out" connects very pre- 
cisely with those other inspired words : — 

" Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to 
God by Thy blood, out of every kindred and 
tongue, and people, and nation." Rev. v. 9. 

And again : " I beheld, and lo, a great multi- 
tude, which no man could number, of (Greek 
«« 3 out of) all nations and kindreds, and peo- 
ple, and tongues, stood before the throne, and 
before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, 
and palms in their hands." Rev. vii. 9. 

So that instead of the words of the Saviour : 
"I will draw out all unto Me," implying un- 
conditional and universal salvation, they prove 
the very contrary, namely, that all the saved 
are a people drawn out, separate, set apart, by 
the atonement of Him Who hath called us 
" out of darkness into His marvellous light." 
1 Peter ii. 9. 

And we shall learn something of the glory 
and beauty to which He has lifted His re- 



EDOM. 103 

deemed earth-clods, as we pass on to study 
what the Holy Spirit has said in His written 
word concerning Olfc, Odem. 



0*18, Odem, the Red Jewel. 

The Sarclius is mentioned three times in 
the Old Testament, — twice, in describing the 
high priest's breastj)late, and once, in enum- 
erating the Tyrian crown-jewels : — 

" And thou shalt set in it settings of stones, 
even four row^s of stones : the first shall be a 
sardius, a topaz, and a carbuncle ; this shall 
be th& first row." Ex. xxviii. 17. 

" And they set in it four rows of stones : 
the first row was a sardius, a topaz, and a 
carbuncle : this was the first row." Ex. 
xxxix. 10. 

" Thou hast been in Eden the garden of 
God : every precious stone w^as thy covering, 
the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the 
beryl, the onyx, and the. jasper, the sapphire, 
the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold : the 
workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes 
was prepared in thee in the day that thou 
wast created." Ezek. xxviii. 17. 

In each of these verses, the word "/Sardius" 



ODEM, THE RED JEWEL. 105 

is expressed in Hebrew by D"tfc, odem, the let- 
ters of which, observe, are exactly those of 
Adam (DTK), and Edom (Dig), but with a dif- 
ference in the points. 

Adam, the red earth-clod has become, by a 
mighty miracle of grace, Odem, the red jewel! 
And this wonder is effected by the interposi- 
tion of Him, Who, for our redemption, stooped 
to bring His Divinity to point our humanity, 
by becoming Edom, the Red Han. 

O the dignity and glory to which the poor 
earth-clod is raised by the power of that pon- 
derous Daysman ! The degraded clod, all 
stained with the blood-guiltiness of the red 
filth of sin, is now a precious jewel, flashing 
forth the pure red brightness of approved re- 
demption. Soiled no longer, dim no more, 
" earthly, sensual, devilish," no further ! The 
whole being is changed by the alchemy of 
grace. All the shame, and vileness, and 
worthlessness of the believer are in the past : 

" Such were some of you ; but ye are 
washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are 
justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and 
by the Spirit of our God." 1 Cor. vi. 11. 



106 



ODEM, THE RED JEWEL. 



" Since thou wast precious in my sight, 
thou hast been honorable, and I have loved 
thee." Is. xliii. 4. 

God's elective sovereignty made the earth- 
clod "precious," just because "the Lord had 
mercy on him " ; and then the atonement of 
the God-Man made him " honorable." 

How many mistakes are made through fail- 
ure to accept the order of salvation exactly as 
the Holy Ghost declares it ! The Arminian- 
ism of human nature says : — 

" I must do something to make myself hon- 
orable, and then the Lord will receive me, and 
count me precious for Christ's sake." 

But the Holy Spirit does not so mix God's 
real work and man's sham performances ; nor 
does He invert the order of God's dealings, 
in a way flattering to man's vanity, but dis- 
honoring to the Most High. 

God, the Eternal Unity, elected to salvation 
the earth-clods who were all undeserving of 
His care. He, in His " determinate counsel 
and foreknowledge " (Acts ii. 23), regarded 
with the tenderness of Infinite Love those 
whom He " ordained to eternal life." Acts 



ODEM, THE 11ED JEWEL. 107 

xiii. 48. He looked upon them with that in- 
tense yearning which marked them out as be- 
ing "precious in His sight " ; and because the 
One God counted them precious, therefore 
" He devised means, that His banished ones 
be not expelled from Him." 2 Sam. xiv. 14. 
This "means," decreed by God in perfect 
unity of purpose, counsel, and love, was 
wrought, applied, and accepted by God in the 
Trinity of His personality. God the Son 
wrought the work of righteousness for a sin- 
ful world of earth-clods ; God the Spirit ap- 
plies the work of atonement to each individ- 
ual believer, and God the Father declares that 
He accepts the work and the application, and 
the souls to which the work is so applied : — 

" And they shall be Mine, saith the Lord of 
Hosts, in that day when I makeup My jewels" 
(rv/VD ? segidlah, special treasure, very own, 
peculiuni), "and I will spare them, as a man 
spareth his own son that serveth him." Mai. 
iii. 17. 

So He makes us honorable, because He 
loved us. He does not love us for His Son's 
sake, but He accepts us for His sake. The 



108 ODEM, THE RED JEWEL. 

coming of Jesus into the world, did not cause 
the Father to love us ; for that would imply 
a want of agreement, a flaw in the perfect 
union between the Father and the Son. 
Father and Son were equal in love as in God- 
head, so that the Incarnation was caused by 
the love of the Father, as much as by the 
love of the Logos Who spoke out the tender- 
ness common to both. 

" God so loved the world, that He gave His 
only begotten Son, that whosoever belie veth 
on Him should not perish, but have everlast- 
ing life." " The Father Himself loveth you." 
John iii. 16, xvi. 27. 

But a place was needed in which the Father 
could, with justice, manifest that love; and 
the Logos came to tell out the mercy, and to 
make that " field of blood," where the stranger- 
hood might be buried, and " life and immor- 
tality brought to light through the gospel.' 1 
2 Tim. i. 10 ; Matt, xxvii. 6, 7 ; Col. ii. 12 
Epli. ii. 12, 13 ; Is. xlii. 21 ; Jer. xxxi. 3; John 
vi. 37, x. 29, 30, 38, xiv. 7-11 ; 1 John v. 7 
John i. 29; Rom. viii. 11, 14; Eph. i. 6. 

We see, in the change wrought on the 



ODEM, THE KED JEWEL. 109 

word, an exact figure of the change wrong] it 
on the man whom Divine grace has converted. 
The letters of OIK, Adam are still there ; but 
the points being changed, a new work ap- 
pears, — O^K, Odem! Instead of the crumb- 
ling soil of the earth-clod, we see the rich, 
clear flash of the hard, bright jewel. John 
Smith, converted, is John Smith still. In 
converting him, the Lord has made him nei- 
ther a god, nor an angel ; he was a man before 
his conversion, he remains a man after it. 
The letters of his humanity are still there ; 
the personality remains the same ; but the 
character, the nature, the tendency, O what 
wonderful newness! He is himself, that is, 
his old self, no longer ; he is one of the King's 
crown-jewels now. How often the world has 
been compelled to acknowledge of such an 
one : — 

" Why, he is quite a new man" ! 
And yet the same man is there. 
Yes ; the same, yet not the same. 

07K, Adam has been transmuted into D^tf, 
Odem. 



110 ODEM, THE RED JEWEL. 

Pliny's old story goes well to illustrate this. 
He tells us that, once upon a time, several 
mariners of Phoenicia landed on the banks of 
a small river in Palestine, and, looking in vain 
for stones on which to rest the pots contain- 
ing the food they wished to cook, they placed 
under those vessels some lunrps of nitrum. 
The heat fused these with the sand, and, to 
the astonishment of the sailors, they beheld a 
liquid and transparent stream flowing forth, 
which gradually crystallized into clear, bright 
glass. So the pure fire " of Him that dwelt 
in the bush" (Ex. iii. 2; Deut. xxxiii. 16), 
melted in tenderest love into companionship 
with our humanity, and wherever that river 
came (Ezek. xlvii. 9), with its life-principle of 
heat and holiness, the earth-clods became 
crystallized into ruby costliness and beauty. 

Henceforth then, the believer is to reckon 
himself no longer an earth-clod. The old 
Adam-nature is to be ignored, crucified, put 
aside, reckoned dead (Rom. vi. 4-13) ; and 
we may well apply to its lusts and powers the 
prophetic words of the Holy Ghost by Peter 
respecting other things : — 



ODEM, THE EED JEWEL. Ill 

" Seeing then that all these things shall be 
dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye 
to be in all holy conversation and godliness, 
looking for and hasting unto the coming of 
the day of God." 2 Peter iii. 11, 12. 

The Lord calls us to forget our own people 
and our father's house, to forget those things 
that are behind, to put off " concerning the 
former conversation the old man which is cor- 
rupt according to the deceitful lusts ; and He 
bids not only believe in Him for the salvation 
of our souls, but in the strength of that salva- 
tion, so to live that the King may greatly de- 
sire our beauty ; He commands us to "reach 
forth unto those things which are before," to 
"put on the new man, which after God is 
created in righteousness and true holiness " ; 
and He enables His redeemed Odems to say, 
with delight : — 

" But now we are delivered from the law, 
that being dead wherein we were held ; that 
we should serve in newness of spirit, and not 
the oldness of the letter." Rom. vii. 6 ; Ps. 
xlv. 10, 11 ; Phil. iii. 13; Eph. iv. 22-24. 

The believer must not live according to the 



112 ODEM, THE RED JEWEL. 

old letters of DIK, Adam, the earth-clod, but 
in the new spirit of those precious points, 
" written with the finger of God," which have 
given to him, as DiK, Odem, the dignity of 
shining forth a gem in the eternal regalia. 

" I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, be- 
seech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation 
wherewith ye are called." Eph. iv. 1. 

Ye are called to be jewels : walk worthy 
of that " high calling of God in Christ Jesus." 
How many times the Lord stimulates us to 
cultivate an increasing realization of our posi- 
tion in Him, encouraging us away from the 
fears and weakness to which the fact of our 
own undeservingness would lead us ! He re- 
minds us that we have nothing to do now 
with the old polluted letter ; we are to live in 
accordance with His new points, which con- 
duct us far away from the former soil of the 
earth-clods. 

" Walk worthy of God, Who hath called 
you to His kingdom and glory." 1 Thess. ii. 
12. 

" Holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly 
calling." Heb. iii. 1. 



ODEM, THE RED JEWEL. 113 

"Who hath saved us, and called us with an 
holy calling, not according to our works, but 
according to His own purpose and grace, 
which was given us in Christ Jesus, before 
the world began." 2 Tim. 1, 9. 

God expects us to live up to the dignity 
with which He hath invested us. 

" Wherefore if any man be in Christ, he is 
a new creature ; old things are passed away, 
behold all things are become new." 2 Cor. v. 
17. 

As a sailor would say : — We are on a new 
tack, heading for a new point of the compass. 

Or as a railway pointsman might express 
it : — We are switched off on a new line, and 
the points locked against our return. 

Yes: — "The <nfts and calling: of God are 
without repentance." Rom. xi. 29. 

He changed the points once, for His re- 
deemed, changed them from O?^ Adam to 
CIS, Odem ; but He will never change them 
back again. There is a lock on tliose points, 
and Jesus has locked the way back, — shut, so 
that we cannot return ; as He said to His be- 
loved disciple : — 



114 ODEM, THE BED JEWEL. 

" I am He that loveth, and was dead ; and 
behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen ; and 
have the keys of hell and of death." Rev. i. 
18. 

Why should John be informed that Jesus 
held the keys of hell and death, except to as- 
sure him that he, being Christ's, was locked 
out of the broad earth-road leading to de- 
struction ? But there is something more : — 

Jesus Christ has locked the way forward, 
— open : — 

" Behold, I have set before thee an open 
door, and no man can shut it" Rev. iii. 8. 

tn?? Adam may become D^fc, Odem; the 
earth-clod may be changed to the jewel ; but 
the precious sardius can never become an 
earth-clod again. The points on that Odem- 
privilege and promise are locked points ; for 
He Who wrote them was a King, the King ; 
and He Who sealed them was the Essence of 
the very Heart of the King. 

" I am the Lord, I change not, therefore ye 
sons of Jacob are not consumed." Mai. iii. 6. 

"Every good gift and every perfect gift is 
from above, and cometh down from the Father 



ODEM, THE EED JEWEL. 115 

of lights, with Whom is no variableness, nei- 
ther shadow of turning." James i. 17. 

Not one point of blessing therefore shall 
ever be revoked. 

" And they shall be Mine, saith the Lord, 
in that day when I make up my jewels." Mai. 
iii. 17. Not only are mine now ; but " shall 
be Mine, in that day" Those who are once 
made His Odems by the atonement of His 
first coming, shall be still Odems, in the gath- 
ering time of His second appearance. All 
whom He saves now shall shine then ; for He 
has said : — 

" They shall never perish, neither shall any 
man pluck them out of My hand." John x. 
28. 

And He says again : — and the words were 
spoken to the Father, Who always hears Him 
(John xi. 42) : — 

"Holy Father, keep through Thine Own 
name those whom Thou hast given Me." 
John xvii. 11. 

And again : — 

" I will write upon him the name of My 
God, and the name of the city of My God, 



116 ODEM, THE RED JEWEL. 

which is New Jerusalem, which cometh down 
out of heaven from My God ; and I will write 
upon him My new name. Rev. iii. 12. 

Jeremiah was taught by the Holy Spirit to 
say of the Lord Jesus, not only in literal con- 
nection with His dear ancient Israel as an 
earthly people, but also in reference to His 
spiritual church : — 

" This is the name whereby He shall be 
called, The Lord our Righteousness." Jer. 
xxiii. 6. 

And the same prophet was instructed to 
say, not only of natural Israel, but also of the 
church : — 

" This is the name wherewith she shall be 
called, the Lord our Righteousness." Jer. 
xxxiii. 16. 

Behold, ye redeemed Odems, the writing 
" in the King's name," " in Whom also after 
that ye believed, ye were sealed with that 
Holy Spirit of promise." " And grieve not 
the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed 
unto the day of redemption." Eph. i. 13, iv. 
30. Here is the writing and the sealing ; and 
"the writing which is written in the King's 



ODEM, THE RED JEWEL. 117 * 

name, and scaled with the King's ring, may 
no man reverse" Esth. viii. 8. 

Well may the Lord's Odems sing amidst 
their safety and beauty : — 

11 Jehovah, Tsidkenu ! my treasure and boast ! 
Jehovah, Tsidkenu ! I ne'er can be lost ! 
In Thee I shall conquer, by flood and by field — 
My cable, my anchor, my breastplate and shield.' ' 

In the breastplate of the Jewish high priest, 
God commanded the sardius (01**, odem) to 
be placed first in order ; and upon it was en- 
grayed the name of Jiidah, which signifies 
"praise" This was no hap-hazard arrange- 
ment ; the narrative is one of those scriptures 
" given by inspiration of God," and is there- 
fore " profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for 
correction, and for instruction in righteous- 
ness." 2 Tim. iii. 16. 

We are not new-created into the redemp- 
tion-glory merely that we may be happy ; but 
for this express purpose, that, as Christ's 
jewels, "we should be to the praise of the 
glory of His grace." Ej)h. i. 12. God de- 
clares : — 



118 ODEM, THE RED JEWEL. 

" The people which shall be created shall 
praise the Lord." Ps. cii. 18. "This people 
have I formed for Myself ; they shall show 
forth My praise." Is. xliii. 21. " Having 
predestinated us unto the adoption of children 
by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the 
good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the 
glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us 
accepted in the Beloved." Eph. i. 5, 6. "Be- 
ing filled with the fruits of righteousness 
which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and 
praise of God." Phil. i. 11. 

The sardius in the breastplate could not 
help shining, for it was its nature to do so. 
It could not help flashing out praise, for the 
word was cut into it, " like the engravings of 
a signet." Ex. xxviii. 21. So those whom 
the Lord has spiritually made His Odems 
cannot help shining, sparkling, glowing ; they 
have no choice about it; His points must 
show out per force the new nature. A gem 
must of necessity shine, just because it is a 
gem ; and God's jewels must shine for Him, 
for He has written "praise " deeply upon 
them i as Paul knew and testified : — 



ODEM, THE RED JEWEL. 119 

" Henceforth let no man trouble me, for I 
bear in my body the marks of the Lord 
Jesus." Gal. vi. 17. 

And since God lias chosen them to show 
forth His praise, His " purpose according to 
election" must "stand." "The Lord of 
Hosts hath purposed, and who shall disannul 
it"? Is. xiv. 27 ; Rom. ix. 11. If then any 
son of Adam dares to call himself the Lord's 
jewel, Odem, while he neither shines nor 
praises, we cannot help knowing that he is no 
genuine gem, but a piece of miserable earth- 
clod paste. Such an one proves himself to be 
still D'JK, Adam; the Lord has not changed 
his points ; for where God writes D^fc, odem, 
He also engraves "praise" and imparts a new 
nature of radiant beauty. Judah and the sar- 
dius belong to each other, by Divine appoint- 
ment. 

How mighty a refutation of the Antinomian 
heresy, — that we may " continue in sin that 
grace may abound " ! How emphatically each 
Hebrew point in this precious word, cries : — 

"God Forbid"! 

How clearly the new word, grown out of 



120 ODEM, THE BED JEWEL. 

the old letters, declares the crucifixion of 
" the old man," the destruction of the " body 
of sin," and asks the indignant question : — 

" How shall we that are dead to sin, live 
any longer therein." Rom. vi. 2, 6. 

The Antinomian presumptuously says : — 
" If you are the Lord's, you may do what you 
like." But the whole teaching of the Bible, 
gathered up into pungent brevity in the word 
Dnfc, oclem, proves that those whom the Holy 
Ghost has made His temple cannot do what 
they like; they must do what He likes. 
Hence_ the conflict in the being of the be- 
liever, his old flesh striving against the new 
life of the Spirit ; a struggle in which the 
Spirit, being necessarily the stronger, must of 
course come off victorious. Thus we read in 
Gal. v. 16, 17 : — 

" This I say then : Walk in the Spirit, and 
ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For 
the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the 
Spirit against the flesh ; and these are con- 
trary the one to the other ; so that ye cannot 
do the things that ye would." 

This passage has been frequently and erro- 



ODEM, THE BED JEWEL. 121 

neously explained, as signifying that, on ac- 
count of the sinful desires of the old nature, 
the Christian is unable to live holily, as the 
renewed would fain do. But this is manifestly 
wrong ; for it puts the Holy Spirit in the po- 
sition of a defeated warrior, weak, and there- 
fore overcome by that against which He 
deigns, on behalf of the believer, to contend. 
The contrary is the true interpretation : The 
old nature resists the Spirit, " desiring great- 
ly " (so the Greek bnfoueo) against Him, and 
eagerly endeavoring to have its own way ; but 
the Spirit is no passive Agent ; He also " de- 
sires greatly" but in an opposite direction, — 
" against the flesh " / Xow which of these 
" desires " is likely to be the more p'owerf ul ? 
Which is the greater, — the "desiring" of the 
sin-body of death, or the " desiring " of the 
Almighty Lord the Spirit ? Which can we 
reasonably conclude, as " desiring greatly " 
with the most intense energy, — the poor 
earth-clod with the death-principle in it, or 
the Eternal Spirit, which is also called " the 
Spirit of life " ? Rom. viii. 2 ; Heb. ix. 14. 
If the Spirit is to be overcome in the believer, 



122 ODEM, THE EED JEWEL. 

why is He there at all? The question an- 
swers itself. Indubitably, He comes to ride. 
" For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, 
they are the sons of God." Rom. fiii. 14. 
And therefore however much the old Adam 
may " desire " and struggle, yet we are saved 
from ourselves by the blood of the Lord 
Jesus, in His name, and by the Spirit of our 
God. 1 Cor. vi. 11. We cannot do the 
things that we would; the Lord mercifully 
hinders us by His indwelling Spirit, Who 
holds us back. TFe, that is, the old Adam, we 
desire sin ; but the Spirit will not suffer it 
upon us (Lev. xix. 17), for He does not hate 
us, but loves those in whom He dwells ; and 
He dwells in them as a conquerer. That is 
why He is given. We need to be " preserved 
in Jesus Christ," as well as to be " called " in 
Him. Jude i. We require present keeping 
as much as past redemption ; and the present 
keeping of the Spirit is as entirely a part of 
the Divine plan of triumphant salvation, as 
the past redemption of Jesus Christ. So Paul 
rejoiced to know and to make known : — 

" I do not frustrate the grace of God. Gal. 
ii. 21. 



ODEM, THE RED JEWEL. 123 

lie could not; the power of the Spirit 
would not allow the grace of God to be frus- 
trated. Paul would have frustrated it surely 
enough, had he been left to himself. He 
acknowledged that ; he recognised the exist- 
ence of the old self, all Paul's by origin and 
nature, as being in antagonism to the new 
nature all belonging to the Spirit, when he 
exclaimed : — 

" I am crucified with Christ ; nevertheless 
I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me ; 
and the life which I now live in the flesh, I 
live by the faith of the Son of God, Who 
loved me, and gave Himself for me." Gal. ii. 
20. 

So the beloved disciple wrote : — 

" Whatsoever is born of God doth not com- 
mit sin, for his seed remaineth in him ; and he 
cannot sin, because he is born of God." 1 John 
iii. 9. 

That is, the new nature which alone the 
Spirit creates, and acknowledges, and inhab- 
its, must be the ruling part of the man. The 
old nature v still exists ; but it is a disinherited, 
trampled, unacknowledged thing, reckoned 



124 ODEM, THE RED JEWEL. 

dead, and therefore never to be consulted in 
its desires. It would rule, if it could ; but the 
crown is lost ; and the despairing wail of the 
defeated body, of sin shrieks forth its own re- 
quiem, amidst its dying struggles : — 

" He hath stripped me of my glory, and 
taken the crown from my head. He hath de- 
stroyed me on every side, and I am gone ; and 
mine hope hath He removed like a tree. He 
hath also kindled His Avrath against me, and 
He counteth me unto Him as one of His ene- 
mies. His troops come together, and raise up 
their way against me, and encamp round 
about my tabernacle." Job xix. 9-12. 

Joseph felt the power of God's mercy, hold- 
ing him back from the sin which his own flesh 
was quite capable of committing; and he con- 
fessed both his own weakness and the Lord's 
triumph, when he exclaimed : — 

" How can I do this great wickedness, and 
sin against God " ? Gen. xxxix. 9. 

The old letters would fain dominate, and 
write D1K, Adam, earth-clod, still ; but the 
victorious might of the more " greatly desir- 
ing " Spirit engraves the celestial points, and 



ODE^r, THE EED JETVEL. 125 

lo ! they rule, to the changing of the whole 
man, and Dlfc, odem, the red jewel, gleams 
forth, " an epistle of Christ, known and read 
of all men. Tims self is forever put down, and 
we learn that " our sufficiency is of God; Who 
also hath made us able ministers of the new 
testament " (or covenant) ; not of the letter, 
but of the Spirit ; for the letter killeth, but 
the Spirit giveth life." 2 Cor. iii. 5, 6. The 
letter would make sinful earth-clods still ; but 
the Spirit gives those points which change us 
to precious " living stones." So that in reply 
to the death-wail of the old nature, in that 
xix.th chapter of Job, the new life of the 
Spirit sings : — 

" I know that my Redeemer liveth." Job 
xix. 25. " Thanks be unto God who giveth 
u> the victory through our Lord Jesus 
Christ." 1 Cor. xv. 57.^ 

Formerly, the soul was the servant of the 
body, "sold under sin," the very name dis- 
graced. But now the strong man D1K, Adam 
no longer keeps his goods in peace; a 
Stronger than he, even the Champion from 
cng, Edom, has taken from him the spoil 



126 



ODEM, THE BED JEWEL. 



wherein he trusted, and has delivered the 
lawful captive, by taking the prey from the 
mighty. Rom. vii. 14; Luke xi. 21, 22 ; Is. 
xlix." 25. 

Now, when the flesh calls its former ser- 
vant, it gives him "no answer" (Job xix. 16) ; 
for the soul, in its new nature, and in its DTk, 
Oclem gladness, exults to realize that : — 

" Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is 
liberty." 1 Cor. iii. 17. 

Thus, while the points in the word Dig, 
Edom reveal the Divine nature and atone- 
ment of the Lord Jesus, the points in the 
word Dl«, odem manifest the sanctifying 
power of the Holy Spirit on and in the per- 
son of the believer, in consequence of that 
atonement. 

By leaving out those precious Hebrew 
points, and reading only the letters composing 
the word D1K, Adam, you get either Unitari- 
anism or Antinomianism. Without the points 
in Dix, Edom, the Red Man would be no 
longer " mighty to save," but would be repre- 
sented as only an earth-clod like ourselves. 
Without the points in Ditt, odem, the Christian 



ODEM, THE EED JEWEL. 127 

would no longer be seen as " called to glory 
and virtue " (2 Peter i. 3), but would be left 
as bad as ever, which is the same as saying 
that there never would be any Christians at 
all. 

But, thank God ! the points are there ! He 
did not leave us to our earth-clod pollution 
and loneliness ; but added, first, the points of 
redemption in His own Person, when He 
came as D^K, Edom, our Kinsman-Redeemer, 
and there showed Himself as " God manifest 
in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of an- 
gels, preached unto the Gentiles," believed on 
in the world, received up into glory." 1 Tim. 
iii. 16. Xext, He added to our persons the 
points of sanctification through Himself, by 
the operation of the Holy Spirit, saying : — 

" Thou shalt be called by a new name." Is. 
lxii. 2. 

And straightway D1K, Odem appeared, in 
lines of starry light. And to all attempts and 
accusations against us, our Champion-King, 
Who liveth, and was dead, and is alive for 
evermore, replies, with a tender steadfastness, 
in those words whose eternal meaning Pilate, 



128 ODEM, THE RED JEWEL. 

Balaam-like, understood not, when he uttered, 
" not of himself," the far-reaching decree : — 

" What I have written, I have written " ! 
Num. xxii. 33 ; John xi. 51, xix. 21, 22. 

This Redeemer, this Sanctifier, this Father 
of ours, never changes, never grows weak or 
weary. He values His blood-bought jewels 
too dearly to give them up ; He holds them 
too carefully to be cheated out of even one of 
them ; His grasp is too mighty to suffer one 
to be plucked away from Him. 

When He wrote the points of Dlfc, ode?n on 
each OIK, Adam of His mercy's choice, He 
wrote a promise, so that each soul so blessed, 
may be " fully persuaded that what He had 
promised, He was able also to perform." 
" For all the promises of God in Him are yea, 
and in Him Amen, unto the glory of God by 
us." Rom. iv. 21 ; 2 Cor. i. 20. He Himself 
proclaims : — 

" Those that Thou gavest Me, I have kept, 
and none of them is lost, but the son of per- 
dition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled." 
John xvii. 12. "No man is able to pluck 
them out of my Father's hand." John x. 29. 



ODEM, THE RED JEWEL. 129 

So Paul could say for himself : — 

" I know Whom I have believed, and am 
persuaded that He is able to keep that which 
I have committed unto Him against that 
day." 2 Tim. i. 12. 

Jude, too, encouraged the church with the 
same assurance when he closed his epistle, so 
thrilling in the living love of its stern warn- 
ings, with the doxology : — 

" Now unto Him that is able to keep you 
from falling, and to present you faultless be- 
fore the presence of His glory with exceeding 
joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, be 
glory and majesty, dominion and power, both 
now and ever, Amen." 

On behalf of believers at Philippi, Paul felt 
authorized by the Holy Spirit to express him- 
self as : — 

" Being confident of this very thing, that 
He Which hath begun a good work in you, 
will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." 
Phil. i. 6. 

And the Lord said to Jeremiah : — 

" Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting 



130 ODEM, THE RED JEWEL. 

love , therefore with loving-kindness have I 
drawn thee." Jer. xxxi. 3. 

David was taught : — 

"The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting 
to everlasting upon them that fear Him." Ps. 
ciii. 17. 

The Lord said to Isaiah, concerning Israel, 
that He would gather — 

" Every one that is called by My name ; 
for I have called him for My glory, I have 
formed him, yea, I have made him." Is. xliii. 7. 

And this applies spiritually to the church, 
as much as it does temporally to Israel, so 
that Paul taught no " strange doctrine," when 
he said to the believing Thessalonians : — 

"Now our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and 
God, even our Father, Which hath loved us, 
and hath given us everlasting consolation and 
good hope through grace, comfort your hearts, 
and stablish you in every good word and 
work." 2 Thess. ii. 16. 

The Author of our faith is also its Finisher. 
Heb. xii. 2. He Who wrote these new points 
upon the old letters will complete their power 
upon us. Before He manifested Himself in 



ODEM, THE EED JEWEL. 131 

our flesh as Edom, in order to raise us to 
Odem-gloiy, He counted the cost of the en- 
terprise, and knew that He had " sufficient to 
finish it " ; so that " having laid the founda- 
tion," He is " able to finish it " ; and in the 
gathering-day of His glorious appearing for 
the church, when He shall " make up His 
jewels " (Mai. iii. 17), none shall mock Him 
then, or dare to say : — 

" This Man began to build, and was not 
able to finish." (See Luke xiv. 28-30.) 

He was mocked once, while the work was 
doing, but He shall be scorned no more, when 
He gathers " in one the children of God that 
are scattered abroad." John xi. 52. The day 
of His humiliation is past, and the morning of 
His manifestation in glory hasteneth on, when 
He will appear as no unskilled or heedless 
calculator, no baffied craftsman, no defeated 
warrior, but in the fadeless dignity of One, 
Who, through untold sufferings, and at im- 
measurable cost, has forever accomplished 
every one of His purposes, and brought safely 
home to the King's treasury the crown-jewels 
of the Eternal Kingdom, none being missing, 



132 ODEM, THE EED JEWEL. 

but each one in its place ; " for the Lord shall 
count, when He writeth up the people " (Ps. 
lxxxvii. 6), and all His redeemed shall be 
there, having the glory of God, and like unto 
a stone most precious." Rev. xxi. 11. 

" Time would fail me to tell of " all the 
sweet assurances written in the Scripture of 
Truth, respecting the interminable perfection 
of the redemption wrought by Him, Who, 
"having loved His own which were in the 
world, loved them unto the end." John xiii. 
1. The promises are there, " written in the 
book," "made plain upon tables," "good news 
from a far country, as cold water to a thirsty 
soul " ; and " whosoever will, let him take 
the water of life freely." Dan. x. 21, xii. 1 ; 
Hab. ii. 2 ; Prov. xxv. 25 ; Rev. xxii. 17. 

And while this glorious word, D}K, odem, 
teaches us that God's salvation is both sancti- 
fying and everlasting, it also inculcates 
another most important lesson, and that is, 
that the doctrine of so-called "perfectionism" 
is an utter fallacy, as regards the believer in 
his existence as a whole. •This deadly error, 



ODEM, THE RED JEWEL. 133 

whether it comes boldly out in the professions 
of those deceived and deceiving souls, who 
openly declare themselves " j)erfect " ; or 
whether it skulks wilily under the specious 
phrases, " higher life," " entire consecration " ; 
or glides smoothly from lip to lip in meetings 
" for the promotion of holiness " ; — in what- 
ever form or shadow it presents itself, is flatly 
contradicted by the declaration of God's 
word, as translated into our simple Saxon, 
and still more unmistakably disproved by the 
expressions of the original languages, gather- 
ed up in sharp epitome by the Hebrew, in 
this little word, Dltf, odem. 

" The body of sin and death," the " letter 
which killeth," is still there : but it is there to 
be crucified, there to be destroyed, there as a 
dead target on which the Christian soldier 
may daily practise the use of his weapons. 

"Perfectionism," denies the existence of 
the enemy sin in the body, and so, fails to 
crucify him. Antinomianism denies the ne- 
cessity of regarding sin as an enemy, and so 
arrives at the same result. One ignores the 
humbling fact of the letters; the other rejects 



134 ODEM, THE RED JEWEL. 

the enobling energy of the points. One re- 
fuses to acknowledge the weakness of human- 
ity ; the other declines to see the power of 
the Holy Ghost. Perfectionism cannot read 
0*7? 5 Adam; Antinomianism will not read 
OtJfc, odem ; and thus, two very opposite 
errors lead men to the same final conse- 
quences, — sin, and its wages, death. Rom. vi. 
23. One of these errors ignores the existence 
of " the old man " ; the other deliberately in- 
dulges all his attainable desires. In both 
cases, the wretched wanderer serves sin, lies 
to the Holy Ghost, and insults the God Who 
wrought out a redemption which cleanses as 
well as saves, and which humbles while it lifts 
up. There is an old Welsh hymn, which I 
have often heard sung with enthusiasm by the 
warm-hearted Cyrnry, the two first lines of 
which run thus : — 

" Gwaed y groes sy'n codi' fyny, 
'R eiddil yn goncwerwr mawr," 

which were translated to me by a Welsh dea- 
con, into English more pithy than elegant, 
thus : — 



ODEM, THE RED JEWEL. 135 

11 The blood of the cross do set a man up, 
And the blood of the cross do set a man down." 

DiK, Edom, the Red Man, has raised, " set 
the man up," to the position of DTO, odem, the 
red jewel, but reminds him that he bears 
about with him still the D^K, Adam, earth- 
clod letters, which the sacred points are to be 
daily, hourly crucifying and putting away into 
a state of absolute humiliation, so that the 
loftiness of man may be bowed down, and the 
haughtiness of men made low, that the Lord 
alone may be exalted. Is. ii. 17 ; 2 Cor. x. 5. 
And teaching us to cry : — 

"Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but 
unto Thy name give glory, for Thy mercy, 
and for Thy truth's sake." Ps. cxv. 1. 

God " worketh in us to will and to do, of His 
good pleasure." Phil. ii. 13. He writes the 
Odem-ipoints on the Adam-letters, and toe have 
done^nothing ! Only in the new power of those 
points, His gift, can we do anything ; but in 
that power, we shall " do great things, and 
shall still prevail." 1 Sam. xxvi. 25. 

The letters of D1K, Adam, certainly exist in 



136 ODEM, THE RED JEWEL. 

every human being ; and where the points of 
cnx, Odem are added, Adam will as certainly 
be crucified, and praise will be attributed to 
the Dix, Edom-Prince, Who has alone been 
" mighty to save," and Who, notwithstanding 
all our past rebellion and present weakness, 
so loves us that, as one of His saved Odems : 
" I am persuaded, that neither death, nor 
life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, 
nor things present, nor things to come, nor 
height, nor depth, nor any other creature, 
shall be able to separate us from the love of 
God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." 
Rom. viii. 38, 39. 



The Root- Word. 

The three words which we have been dis- 
cussing, so different in individual meaning, 
yet so closely related, and so evidently 
marked by features of family resemblance, 
are branches, growing out of one common 
root : — 

Dix, adam, red, or he glows or blushes. 

And the idea of blushing beauty character- 
izes this word of glorious paternity. In pro- 
nunciation, it can scarcely be distinguished 
from the sound of D^x, adam, the red earth- 
clod ; although to the eye, the difference in 
the second point clearly marks it, for the He- 
brew scholar, as having an independent exis- 
tence of its own. In order therefore to pre- 
vent confusion in the mind of the unlearned 
reader, we will, when expressing this Hebrew 
word in English letters, write it thus : adem; 
which, too, approximates very closely to the 



138 THE ROOT-WORD. 

correct pronunciation, and will sufficiently 
distinguish it, for the English reader, from 
the branch-word which it so nearly resembles. 
From this word, spring those at the head 
of our previous chapters, and the thoughts 
contained in them, arise from the thought 
permeating this : — 

' D*1X, CHK, D1K, 

Odem Edom Adam 

adem 

In God's eternal purpose was the root of 
man's salvation. Ao;ain and a^ain did the 
utter degradation of the human race tempt the 
outraged Creator to Sweep out of existence 
the creatures which He had made, and which 
the devil had spoiled. And yet those creat- 
ures continued to multiply on the earth, aye, 
and to receive blessing, too, notwithstanding 
their revolting state of defilement. Adam 
could not be utterly blotted out, for the let- 
ters of his name stood in the Almighty coun- 
sels, in the warm tints of a " covenant of life 



THE ROOT-WORD. 139 

and peace " ; — stood there, inextricably in- 
volved in the promise of a victory to be 
achieved on his behalf, and in the "sealed 
evidence " of those counsels, of a lofty posi- 
tion to be dealt out to him, as the grace-gift 
of his Deliverer. Mai. ii. 5 ; Jer. xxxii. 11. 

So God looked at His own celestial ar- 
chives, and in the volume of that book (Ps. 
xl. 7), He read His eternal decree that there 
should be beauty in the earth-clod, far sur- 
passing the loveliness of the first creation ; so 
He looked down on the earth-clod in its sin, 
and reading the letters of His purpose there, 
His Infinite heart yearned out the cry : — 

" Thus saith the Lord, As the new wine is 
found in the cluster, and one saith, Destroy it 
not, for a blessing is in it ; so will I do for my 
servants' sakes, that I may not destroy them 
all." Is. lxv. 8. 

Blushing beauty! Could a blush tinge 
God's purpose, or could the ruined earth-clod 
ever brighten into fairness ? Yes, the Omni- 
science of Jehovah foresaw the sin of Adam ; 
the Love of Jehovah Elohim foreordained a 
means whereby man should be convinced of 



140 THE ROOT-WORD. 

his wickedness ; and the power of that same 
Triune Self-Existent Covenant-Keeper predes- 
tined that one after another of the ruined 
race should be " apprehended of Christ Jesus," 
and should by a grace unspeakable, be com- 
pelled to come in, that the covenant might be 
fulfilled. Phil. iii. 12 ; Luke xiv. 23. 

The reason why man needed to blush, was 
his sin ; the cause of his being able to blush 
for it, was the Lord's mercy. No sinner ever 
yet felt ashamed of his sin, until the Lord en- 
abled him to do so ; the cause was of the 
Lord," " because of His covenant." 2 Chron. 
x. 15 ; 2 Kings xiii. 23. And a soul ashamed 
of himself is lovely in God's sight ; for the 
Lord then beholds His own handiwork, eras- 
ing the deforming marks of Satan's meddling. 
Those whom Scripture records as standing 
highest in God's favor are those whose blush- 
ing for their own uncleanness laid them low- 
est at His feet, and whom recognizing His 
grace in them, He raised to His heart. Ezra 
and Daniel were covered with confusion be- 
fore their God, and were gloriously blessed by 
Him ; Paul owned himself the chief of sin- 



TIIE EOOT-WOED. 141 

ners, and was made a chief apostle by the 
" wisdom given unto him " ; the publican was 
so ashamed that he dared not look up, yet 
"went down to his house, justified." Ezra 
ix. 6; Dan. ix. 7; 1 Tim. i. 15; 2 Cor. xii. 11; 
2 Peter iii. 15 ; Luke xviii. 13, 14. 

The most loathsome absence of beauty in 
the hardened sinner is characterized by his 
brazen impudence in refusing all acknowledge- 
ment of his real state ; and the Lord describes 
this climax of evil, and its consequence, twice 
over, in nearly the same words, by the mouth 
of the prophet Jeremiah : — 

" Were they ashamed when they had com- 
mitted abomination? Nay, they were not 
ashamed, neither could they blush ; therefore 
they shall fall amongthem that fall ; at the 
time that I visit them they shall be cast down, 
saith the Lord." Jer. vi. 15. 

" Were they ashamed when they had com- 
mitted abomination ? Nay, they were not at 
all ashamed, neither could they blush ; there- 
fore shall they fall among them that fall ; in 
the time of their visitation they shall be cast 
down, saith the Lord." Jer. viii. 12. 



142 THE ROOT-WORD. 

But for those sons of Adam unto whom the 
Lord hath given " repentance unto life " (Acts 
xi. 18 ; Rom. ii. 4), there is all the rich ful- 
ness of comfort in Christ Jesus. He beholds 
in every blush of their penitence, the beauty 
of His own accomplished purpose. And when 
the believer, graciously conscious of his own 
pollution, sobs forth the wail : — "I am black 
as the tents of Kedar " ; the Lord tenderly 
whispers to his heart : — 

" Comely as the curtains of Solomon." 
" Exceeding beautiful " ; " perfect through 
My comeliness " ! Sol. Song i. 5 ; Ezek. xvi. 
13, 14. 

And when the soul, still trembling under 
the fact of its own deformity, again tearfully 
wails : — 

" Look not upon me, because I am black " 
(Sol. Song i. 6), her Lord returns the thrilling 
answer : — 

" Let Me see thy countenance, let Me hear 
thy voice ; for sweet is thy voice, and thy 
countenance is comely." Sol. Song ii. 14. 

Then the soul sees its glorious privilege ; 
sees what is the " godly sorrow," the " re- 



THE EOOT-WORD. 143 

pentance unto salvation" (2 Cor. vii. 10) ; and 
" strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus " 
(2 Tim. ii. 1), blushes out of shame into the 
bridal " beauty of holiness," as the " Lamb's 
Wife," and exclaims, in the love that thank- 
fully takes, knowing what it takes : — 

" Let the beauty of the Lord our God be up- 
on us." " I am my Beloved's, and His desire 
is toward me." Ps. xc. 17 ; Sol. Song vii. 10; 
2 Chron. xx. 21 ; 1 Chron. xvi. 29 ; Rev. xxi. 
9, xix. 7. 

And so, in God's sight, the beauty of a soul 
redeemed into penitence and newness of life, 
is far brighter than that of Adam, as he stood, 
pure and fair in cold creation-loveliness ; for 
He not only tells us that : — 

" There is joy in tire presence of the angels 
of God, over one sinner that repent eth" (Luke 
xv. 10) ; but says also : — 

"I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be 
in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, 
more than over ninety and nine just persons 
which need no repentance." Luke xv. 7. 

The literal meaning of Isaiah i. 18, shows 
this very beautifully, in its rich fulness of in- 



144 THE ROOT-WORD. 

timation that the power to repent of sin 
comes after, and is the result of an eternal 
purpose of salvation in the Divine Mind. 

"Come now, and let us reason together, 
saith the Lord ; though your sins be as scarlet 
double-dyed, they shall be made as white as 
snow; though they be made red (cn*J, aderri) 
like the crimson worm-stain, they shall be as 
wool." 

Here in these words, addressed evidently to 
a soul under conviction, the phrases, " scarlet 
double-dyed" and "crimson worm-stain" re- 
fer to the fact of the loathsomeness of the sin 
actually existing in the human heart ; while 
the words, "made red" are the very root- 
word of our subject, and contain the assurance 
that the revelation of a soul's real state, to its 
own consciousness, is a grace, given out of 
God's long ago settled purpose of salvation to 
that soul. He decreed that He would so 
show it its sin, that it should realize with bit- 
ter shame the degradation of that sin; and 
then, having so prepared it for pardon, He 
also predestinated that soul to enter into the 
living beauty of a forgiven one, saved from 



THE EOOT-WOED. 145 

its sin, and caused to rejoice by receiving 
" beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourn- 
ing, the garment of praise for the spirit of 
heaviness." Is. lxi. 3 ; Matt. i. 21. While 
the Lord gives judgment "burning instead of 
beauty " (Is. iii. 24), to the impenitent confi- 
ders in Self, He endues with the exquisite 
charm of His irreversible decrees, all whom 
the Holy Spirit bows under such conviction 
as He alone can give. 

Thus, in Isaiah i. 18, " scarlet" and " crim- 
son" are words describing sin's present fact 
of shame ; but " red" is a word, which, in its 
Hebrew origin, goes back before the very ex- 
istence of sin or sinner, to God's elective love 
and predestinating grace. 

Repentance, sorrow for sin, is no more a 
work of man's natural performance or acquire- 
ment, than the pardon which answers it ; both 
repentance and forgiveness come, "not of 
works, but of Him that calleth." Rom. ix. 11. 

Long before man was born into this sinful 
state of work-failure, God's established pur- 
pose was, to " call" D"ix, adem, blushing 
beauty, thrilled the Eternal Heart with its 

10 



146 THE KOOT-WOBD. 

yearning plan of rescue, before D1K, adam, 
the earth-clod, came to sin ; before Dig, Edom, 
the Red Man, came in the manifestation of 
that plan to save ; and before Dlfc, odem, the 
red jewel, could be crystallized out of the 
crude shame of sin, into the blushing beauty 
of the soul redeemed by the Fulfiller's glo- 
rious proclamation : — 

" It is finished " ! John xix. 30. 

In Ex. xxv. 5, and xxxv. 7, 23, we read that 
the Lord commanded those who were " of a 
willing heart " (xxxv. 5), among the children 
of Israel, to bring, according to their ability, 
gifts of certain materials for making the tab- 
ernacle. Prominent in the list, stands the 
mention of " rams* skins, dyed red," or, as the 
Hebrew has it, "made red" ; and this word, 
translated "dyed" or, "made red" is our 
root-word, DHK, adem. We are told also that 
these " rams' skins dyed red," were to be used 
for a very special purpose : — 

" Thou shalt make a covering for the tent 
of rams' skins dyed red" (dik, adem). Ex. 
xxvi. 14. 



THE ROOT-WORD. 147 

a And he made a covering for the tent of 
ranis' skins dyed red" (Dix, adem). xxxvi. 19. 

"And they brought the tabernacle imto 
Moses, the tent, and all his furniture, his 
taches, his boards, his bars, and his pillars, 
and his sockets, and the covering of rams' 
skins dyed red (D*?x, adem), and the covering 
of badgers' skins, and the veil of the cover- 
ing." xxxix. 33, 34. 

Thus, thrice over, are we informed of the 
use to which these " rams' skins dyed red " 
were to be put. First, we get the " determi- 
nate counsel" of the Fatherhood: — "Thou 
shedt make? Xext, we have the accomplished 
work of the Only Begotten Son : — " And he 
made? Lastly, the Trinity is completed by 
the applying power of the Holy Ghost : — 
" And they brought? Here, too, we see how, 
in the first and second instances, God works 
quite apart from man ; but in the third place, 
the circumstances are presented to us, as hav- 
ing been changed by the wonderful mi^ht of 
the two previous steps taken. In the first of 
these three passages, we see " heaven opened," 
and, in the secret counsel of the Kingdom, the 



148 THE ROOT-WOED. 

Father addresses the Son, of Whom Moses 
was, as to service, a type. Deut. xviii. 15, 
18 ; Acts iii. 22, vii. 37 ; Heb. iii. 1-5. Here 
we see, blooming into rich, glowing beauty, 
the " covenant of life and peace " (Mai. ii. 5, 
6, compared with Is. liii. 9). 1 Peter ii. 22 ; 
1 John iii. 5. And the Divine Son entered 
into that covenant, and rendered it, by His 
obedience, an actual, tangible thing. He 
" made a covering " of the beauty of His own 
atonement for His chosen church. He became 
her " near Kinsman," and He " spread the 
skirt " of His rich redemption over her (Ruth 
iii. 9), thus becoming for her so thoroughly " a 
covering of the eyes" (Gen. xx. 16), that the 
Lord might say to his enemies and hers : — 

"He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, 
neither hath He seen perseverance in Israel ; 
the Lord his God is with him ; and the shout 
of a King is among them." Num. xxiii. 21. 

But now that Father and Son have done 
their special work for the dead sinner, un- 
joined by him and totally separate from him; 
now that the purpose of Fatherhood and the 
obedience of Sonship (Eph. iii. 11 ; Phil. ii. 



THE ROOT-WORD. 149 

6-8) have accomplished salvation for him ; 
now, the Holy Ghost is manifested by the 
accomplishment of that salvation in the soul; 
and so, most appropriately, the plural number 
comes into play, in the phrase : — 

" And they brought." 

For hitherto God worked alone, for man 
(see John v. 17) ; now, by the gift of the 
Holy Ghost, God works in him, and icith him. 
Of the unconverted it may be said, that " God 
was grieved for the misery " (Judges x. 16) ; 
and that " while we were yet sinners, Christ 
died for us." Rom. v. 8. But the soul, once 
converted, " made nigh by the blood of 
Christ (Eph. ii. 13), enters into an abiding 
companionship icith the Lord, through the in- 
dwelling of the Holy Spirit ; and in the dig- 
nity of this new patent of nobility, is per- 
mitted to say : — 

" It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to 
its." Acts xv. 28. 

There is association, fellowship and agree- 
ment ! 

God devises the })lan whereby man may be 
made a fit dwelling-place for Himself. 



150 THE BOOT-WOED. 

' The God-man renders the plan a fact. 

The Eternal Spirit takes possession of the 
man, and enables him, as a Christian, to do 
what the dead sinner never could, namely to 
present his " body a living sacrifice, holy, ac- 
ceptable unto God." Rom. xii. 1. 

The work of redemption by Christ Jesus is 
a finished, perfect work. The " work of the 
tabernacle of the tent " (Ex. xxxix.) was " fin- 
ished," and then " they brought " it. So the 
Purpose ordains, the Blood fulfils (how often 
the Lord used the word "fulfil" of His 
work!), and the Spirit applies. And then 
God and the believer are at one with each 
other. Now we read of " laborers together 
with God," "fellow-heirs." Now come into 
view all the " togethers," in their " blushing- 
beauty " of being " quickened together," 
" raised together," " seated together," " glori- 
fied together." 1 Cor. iii. 9 ; Eph. ii. 5 and 
John vi. 63 ; Eph. ii. 6 ; Rom. viii. 17. 

God and man are divided no more, when 
the Spirit has once applied the blood, The 
" middle wall of partition " is "broken down" 
(Eph. ii. 14), and " they " work together. 



THE ROOT-WOED. 151 

Our Lord's priestly prayer in John xvii., 
thrillingly describes this blessed position into 
which the believer is brought, as the result of 
the Purpose, the " Obedience unto death," 
and the application. 

The Jewish high priest, when he sprinkled 
the blood before the mercy-seat, on the great 
day of atonement, stood inside the veil, under 
the " covering of rams' skins dyed red." He 
could not approach the mercy-seat without 
being roofed over with the types and emblems 
of God's purpose to bring beauty and joy into 
the midst of human shame and death. No 
light was kindled there in that Most Holy 
Place. The light of human reason, kindled 
by human hands, could never enable man to 
read God's wonderful designs of love. But 
the Shechixah blazed forth from between the 
cherubim ! Ex. xxv. 22 ; Num. vii. 89 ; 1 
Sam. iv. 4 ; 2 Sam. vi. 2 ; 2 Kings xix. 15; 
Is. xxxvii. 16 ; Ps. lxxx. 1, xcix. 1 ; Ezek. x. 
2, 6, 7. God Himself lighted up the Holy 
of Holies, and flashed forth His glory on the 
" rams' skins dyed red." He alone could light 
up His own mysteries. 



152 THE ROOT-WOED. 

" Blind unbelief is sure to err, 
And scan His work in vain; 
God is His Own Interpreter, 
And He will make it plain." 

But He makes it plain only to those who, 
leaving earth's false glare, " have boldness to 
enter into the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, 
by a new and living way which He hath con- 
secrated for us through the veil, that is to say, 
His flesh." Heb. x. 19, 20. Outsiders, who 
have never " entered into that w T ithin the veil" 
(Heb. vi. 19), imagine that there, as without, 
" clouds and darkness are round about Him " 
(Ps. xcvii. 2) ; even believers, at first, " fear 
as they enter into the cloud," as they pass 
through the veil into the sacred mysteries 
beyond (Luke ix. 34) ; but, once there, they 
find their Saviour-God, and realize that "with 
Him is no darkness at all" (1 John i. 5), for 
" He covereth Himself with light as with a 
garment" (Ps. civ. 2) ; and in that "Fountain 
of light," they " see light " (Ps. xxxvi. 9) ; 
and they " see what is the fellowship of the 
mystery " (Eph. iii. 9) ; for they can read the 
thoughts hidden from the world, but revealed 



THE ROOT-AVOItD. 153 

unto the souls made " kings and priests unto 
God " (Col. i. 26 ; Rev. i. 6), in those " rams' 
skins dyed red." They can read His long 
formed plan ; they can feel that for them, and 
in them, that plan has been accomplished, or 
they would not be there, within the veil! So, 
looking at the "blushing beauty" covering 
their souls with its glory-gift, they burst into 
the glad new song : — 

" We know that all things work together 
for good to them that love God, to them that 
are the called according to His purpose. For 
whom He did foreknow, He also did predes- 
tinate to be conformed to the image of His 
Son, that He might be the First-born among 
many brethren. Moreover whom He did pre- 
destinate, them He also called ; and whom He 
called, them He also justified; and whom He 
justified, them He also glorified. What shall 
we then say to these things ? If God be for 
us, who can be against us? He that spared 
not His own Son, but delivered Him up for 
us all, how shall He not with Him also freely 
give us all things? Who shall lay anything 
to the charge of God's elect ? It is God that 
justifieth " ! Rom. viii. 28-33. 



154 THE ROOT-WOED. 

When a thought of man entered into God's 
purpose, there was a blush ; — but when His 
own Son " pleaded the cause of our reproach," 
declaring Himself "not ashamed to call us 
brethren" (1 Sam. xxv. 39; Heb. ii. 11, 12), 
there was beauty ; — and we have cause to say 
of our Deliverer : 

"My Beloved is white and ruddy" (B"ik, 
adorn), " a standard-bearer among ten thou- 
sand." "His mouth is most sweet" (it spoke 
for me, and it tells me how He pleaded) ; 
"yea, He is altogether lovely. This is my 
Beloved, and this is niy Friend, O daughters 
of Jerusalem." Sol. Song v. 10, 16. 

" White" in His own purity; — "ruddy" 
with the Adam-tinge assumed on my behalf ! 
Yet "not ashamed" of me! "Is not this the 
Christ"? John iv. 29. 

And he puts His own rich beauty upon His 
Church, and she is "changed into the same 
image, from glory to glory, even as by the 
Spirit of the Lord." 2d Cor. iii. 18. 

He bore the shame, and even despised it, 
for her, even as Jacob despised into insignifi- 
cance the waiting and toiling for his beloved 



THE BOOT-WORD. 155 

Rachel. Heb. xii. 2; Gen. xxix. 20. He took 
all reproach "out of the way," so that no 
shame, no judgments, are left for her. Col. 
ii. 14; Is. liv. 4; Zeph. iii. 15. 

" No drop remains of all the curse 
For rebels who deserved the whole ; 
Xo arrows dipped in wrath, to pierce 
The guilty, but returning soul. 

" Peace by such means so deeply bought, 
What rebel could have hoped to see ? 
Peace by his injured Sovereign wrought, 
His Sovereign fastened to a tree." 

And now He beholds His redeemed ones, 
reconciled by Himself unto God (Eph. Ii. 16; 
Col. i. 21), and He becomes unto them "a 
crown of glory, and a diadem of beauty." 
Is. xxviii. 5. In giving Himself to the Church, 
He clothes her with beauty, and, viewing His 
own finished work in her, He exclaims : 

"How fair and how pleasant art thou, O 
love, for delights " ! Sol. Song vii. 6. 

In the same chapter, the fifth verse, ad- 
dressed to the Church, shows how God's pur- 
posed plan to remove the shame of her sin, 
has bloomed into beauty; — and in this, as in 



156 THE ROOT-WORD. 

all similar passages of Scripture, we read the 
double fact, that the Church is royal and fair, 
but that she is so, by gift, and not by origiyi : 

" Thin e head upon thee is like Carmel, and 
the hair of thine head like purple; — the king 
is held in the galleries." 

The word "Carmel" in Hebrew, signifies 
not only the name of a mountain, but means 
also " a fruitful place " ; — and, in addition to 
that, by affinity with the Sanscrit, Armenian, 
and Arabian, suggests the idea of the worm- 
dye, changed into "splendor of crimson" 
Does not this describe a long history in a very 
few words ? The Church had once the worm- 
dye of sin ; — but her Lord's purpose has given 
her the " splendor of crimson " in the enf olcl- 
ings of His righteous robe of salvation. The 
word "galleries" might be better translated 
either "floioings" or "ringlets?, The first 
rendering would remind us how He paused in 
His " passing-by," "held" by His glorious pity 
for the lost one. Ezek. xvi. 8 ; Luke xviii. 37, 
40. The second rendering would accord very 
touchingiy with the Lord's admiring love, as 
expressed in the beginning of the verse, and 
well carries out the figure: 



THE BOOT-WORD. 157 

"Thine head upon thee is like the splendor 
of crimson, and the hair of thine head like 
purple; — the king is held (margin, bound) in 
the ringlets." 

He so loves the beauty of His redeemed, 
and is so bound up in their welfare, that He 
numbers and protects the hairs of their head 
(Matt. x. 30; Luke xxi. 18), and entangles 
Himself inextricably in the loveliness which 
His grace has brought in them, He beholds 
in them no shame, no disgrace, but the flush 
of loving expectation, watching for his com- 
ing to take them home, glorying in His mes- 
sages, in each of which He speaks good words 
and comfortable words; — and He rejoices in 
the "splendor of crimson" which suffuses the 
brow of the Church, as she longs for* the hour 
when she and her Lord shall speak "face to 
face," that their "joy may be full." Zech i. 
13; Hos. ii. 14; John iii. 2; 2 Peter iii. 12; 
2 John 12; 3 John 14. 

But all this gives the Church no excuse for 
boasting. If she is clothed radiantly in the 
"splendor of crimson," as D^fc, odem, the red 
jewel, the cause is not in herself; — the cause of 



158 THE ROOT-WOBD. 

D^tf , odem, is in the rootword, En*J, adem, and 
the means are in the D^K, edom, the " Branch 
out of his roots." Zech. iii. 8, vi. 12; Is. iv. 
2, xi. 1; Jer. xxiii. 5, xxxiii. 15; Luke i. 78, 
margin. 

"Boast not against the Branches. But if 
thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the 
root thee" Rom; xi. 18. 

"He that glorieth, let him glory in the 
Lord." 2 Cor. x. 17; 1 Cor. i. 31; Jer. ix. 24. 

Thus, step by step, we have traced the 
course of Divine grace, whose history is 
wrapped up and contained in the one little 
name, Adam, at the beginning of the long list 
in 1 Chron. i. 1. 

We have seen how God shows us to our- 
selves as being : 

D1K, Adam, the red earth-clod. 

We have seen how He shows Himself to us 
for our salvation as : 

Dig, JEdom, the Bed Man. 

We have seen how He shows Himself to 
us, in us, as having made us : 






THE ROOT-TVORD. 159 

DTK, Odem, the red jewel. 

And we have seen how all this rescuing 
glory and love are rooted in His changeless 
purpose of: 

O^K, Adern^ blushing beauty. 

"What shall we then say to these things"? 

We long to see Him who has so loved us. 
The jewel pines for the dignity of a fitting 
rest on the bosom of its Owner. The bride, 
grateful for the tenderness of Him who hath 
lifted her in His betrothal, from her low es- 
tate (Hos. ii. 19, 20), watches eagerly for the 
coming of her Lord to take her home for 
ever. We who "loved Him because He first 
loved us" (1 John iv. 19), do rejoice in Him, 
"though now we see Him not, with joy un- 
speakable, and full of glory." 1 Pet. i. 8. 

But yet "there's more to follow"! And 
we wait for the manifestation, when He will 
gather His jewels finally together in one 
regalia, when we shall hear that One dear 
Voice calling us to meet Him in the air, 
"when He shall come to be glorified in His 
saints, and admired in all them that believe." 



160 THE ROOT-WORD. 

And while we are yet held in the waiting 
time, let us remember that if one mere word 
of His written love has such rich fulness, 
there must be an unimagined wealth treasured 
up for us in the coming eternity of spoken, 
face to face communion, with the promise of 
which, He strengthens us, when he says : 

Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither 
have entered into the heart of man the things 
which God hath prepared for them that love 
Him." 1 Cor. ii. 9. 

"Surely I come quickly" ! Rev.xxii. 20. 

How can each ramsomed soul do other than 
sigh forth, in the power of its odem-love : 

" Even so, come, Lord Jesus." 

And when His glad shout (Thess. iv. 16), 
has caught us up to meet Him in that prom- 
ised coming, then, clasped for ever to His 
Heart, in the fulfillment of "that blessed 
hope" (Tit. ii. 13), we shall feel in that first 
rapture of union with Himself: 

"Ah! 'tis Heaven at last"! 



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